MCC Palestine Update #91
December 17, 2003
This past week I received a Christmas card from our friends at the Wi’am Center for Conflict Resolution in Bethlehem. The illustration on the card (produced by Wi’am) was poignant and striking. Shepherds, sheep, donkeys, even Mary and Joseph find themselves separated from the Christ child by barbed-wire fences. Mary is pictured trying to reach through the fence to touch her son. The rays of the Christmas star, however, do manage to pierce through the barbed wire, shining down on Jesus in his simple manger. This card well summarizes the reality of Bethlehem and many other West Bank cities this Christmas: encircled by electronic fences, concrete walls, barbed wire. If Mary and Joseph tried to travel today from Nazareth to Bethlehem on the route they would have taken 2,000 years ago, they would be lucky to reach Jenin: checkpoints, roadblocks, barbed wire would stand in their way.
The good news of Christmas, however, is that, despite the roadblocks, the checkpoints, the fences and walls that create a reality of “separation” (apartheid), God’s incarnation is a reality. God’s incarnation in the Christ child extends into the Body of Christ, the church: despite the walls of separation being erected, the church in the occupied territories continues to witness to a reality of reconciliation that is built with bridges instead of walls. Palestinian and Israeli peacebuilders participated in this reality on Saturday, December 13, as they gathered in al-Ram north of Jerusalem to say NO to a future of walls that dispossess. The reality in the occupied territories this Advent is somber and grim, as Palestinians face being encircled and imprisoned by walls and fences. Yet hope can be found amidst this despair, as the church and Palestinian and Israeli peacebuilders witness through word and deed to a future consisting of bridges of reconciliation instead of walls of dispossession, aggression and hatred.
Please pray this Advent and this Christmas-season for the witness of the Palestinian churches and for the work of organizations such as Wi’am, Sabeel, and the Israeli Committee against House Demolitions.
MCC Project Update:
On December 26, Israeli Jewish members of Zochrot will visit the Bethlehem area as guests of the Badil Resource Center for Refugee and Residency Rights. The day will be an opportunity for refugee communities to become acquainted with this new Israeli organization that is dedicated to working on durable solutions for Palestinian refugees. Please have this meeting in your prayers.
Below you will find three pieces of analysis, all from MCC partners. The first, by Ghassan Andoni of the Palestinian Center for Rapprochement, looks at how the “separation wall” constitutes an act of aggression. MCC recently gave a grant to Rapprochement to assist with its media center (the International Middle East Media Center): visit its website, http://www.imemc.org/. The second piece is by Samia Khoury, a Palestinian Christian woman who serves on the board of MCC partner organization, the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center; Samia perceptively examines the reality behind what she calls “the Geneva hoopla.” The final item is a research bulletin from the Badil Resource Center for Refugee and Residency Rights; the bulletin examines how refugee participation in peace agreements addressing conflicts that have created refugees is essential to durable peace and reconciliation and discusses how Palestinian refugee voices have been excluded from political discussions concerning their future. This is the final update of 2003. Updates will resume in early January 2004.
--Alain Epp Weaver
1. Separation Wall, a Typical Mixture of Security and Aggression
Ghassan Andoni - IMEMC-Analysis, December 12, 2003
The UN General Assembly voted to demand for the International Court of Justice to give a legal advisory concerning the "separation wall". A resolution supported by 90 countries, opposed by 8, and around 60 countries abstained. It is still early to tell how significant this move can be. According to expert's expectations, it might take years for the court to conclude its work and issue an advisory. Therefore, it is likely that developments on the ground can take over any expected court decision. Israel faces a serious legal dilemma. To present a stand consistent with international law; it has to plea as an occupier power that "has the right to build fences and other types of constructions needed for security purpose". To plea as an occupation power contradicts the basic stand of all Israeli governments that defines the "territories" as disputed. Recognizing that Israel is an occupying power with certain rights stated in international law, would as well force Israel to recognize, as well, Jerusalem as an occupied territory. The story of the Separation wall is not different from that of settlements, closure, land grabs, settler's outposts, or by-passing roads. All were created for an alleged security reason, in few limited cases it was even possible to recognize that security need, but all of them were structured to serve an ideological or political purpose as well. In relation to the separation wall, every Israeli official stressed the need for the wall as pre-emptive to military attacks inside Israel, including suicide attacks. Yet, each of them avoided answering to why it needs to be built deep into the Palestinian territories and not on the green line. Even, the closest ally to Israel, namely the United States, could not but see another agenda in building the wall. Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei expressed even interest in sharing the coast of the wall if it is built on the green line, but rejected for it to be built even a millimeter inside the Palestinian occupied territories. It is very right for Palestinians to point to the intentions to grab more land, force discontinuity to the Palestinian areas, define borders unilaterally, and being used as a way to collectively punish Palestinians. Israel could do, based on pure security assessment, a fence on the green line, and deploy more forces around settlements to "protect" them until their issue is addressed politically, yet rejecting to be partner to a truce agreement and continuing with the construction of the wall based on settler's interests reflects the set of priorities of the current Israeli government. In relation to road blocks and military check posts, it is clear that within a conflict period, more security measures are needed by even an occupying authority, yet, how security figures could explain the security need behind blocking the road between two adjacent Palestinian villages is still standing for an explanation. Recently, even army and security heads started to publicly criticize the policies of the current government as being counter productive and making Israel more vulnerable than protected. Amazingly enough, while the current government expressed no intention to compromise on any level, it became very forwarding, at least verbally, on the issue of easing Palestinian living conditions. This issue was until recently presented as the most security related issue of all. Confusing security needs with aggression becomes self defeating to security legitimate needs. No wonder why almost all the world, including the United States, are questioning and doubting the Israeli intentions and demanding for Israel to stop the aggressive act of building the wall deep inside Palestinian occupied territories.
2. The Hoopla in Geneva
by Samia Khoury
(Monday December 15 2003)
"It seems that all those dignitaries were getting together to endorse the redundancy of the United Nations and its resolutions since the stipulations of this initiative if implemented are supposed to supersede all previous UN resolutions. So in reality Israel is being rewarded for its intransigence and for defying the United Nations."
For the last couple of months, we have been reading details of the Geneva Initiative, and listening to opinions for and against this initiative. So finally the signing of this document took place in Geneva. But why all the fanfare. Listening to the music and singing one would think we are really celebrating Palestinian independence. It is bad enough that we commemorate November 15 the day of the announcement of the declaration of independence as independence day, when in reality we are still under military occupation. So was the hoopla in Geneva another overture for another date to add to our long list of commemorations?
It would be naive to think that people who have been dispossessed for over half a century and living under military occupation for the last thirsty six years are not anxious to live in peace. But it would be just as naive to think that the signing of this "unofficial document" in Geneva is really a "breakthrough in peace negotiations"
One would think that the region has learnt enough lessons from the various peace initiatives since the Madrid conference, which was based on UN Security Council resolutions 242 and 338. Initiatives that have been doomed to failure, basically because those UN resolutions and all previous ones, including the right of return have been defied by Israel all along. So what was magic about this initiative to make its fate any different? Did the occasion really warrant a celebration? It seems that all those dignitaries were getting together to endorse the redundancy of the United Nations and its resolutions since the stipulations of this initiative if implemented are supposed to supersede all previous UN resolutions. So in reality Israel is being rewarded for its intransigence and for defying the United Nations.
To contemplate making compromises on the right of return requires a clear mandate from the Palestinian refugees themselves. Those who continue to live in refugee camps in the Arab countries, and those who have been dispersed all over the world are the only ones who are entitled to speak on behalf of the refugees. We have heard people say that we need to be pragmatic since many, or most of the refugees might not want to return. To start with that is not an accurate assumption. Moreoever there is a difference between one's basic right and one's choice of how to deal with that right. So if some of the refugees do not want to return, it should be by their own choice, and not because somebody has made a deal on their behalf to deprive them of that right.
Palestinians have a historical narrative that asserts their rights, and there is no way peace negotiations can move ahead without the recognition of those rights. Unfortunately, Israel refuses to recognize its responsibility for our dispossession and for creating the refugee problem. Yet the Palestinians are demanded to make more concessions to their rights. Simply because, strategically they are powerless, they do not have the privilege of choice. Does this mean it is acceptable to trample over the powerless. In this century when the law of the jungle has been replaced by the United Nations, it would seem an unacceptable justification for the Palestinians to forfeit their rights simply because they are powerless.
It is indeed very sad that Palestinians are helping Israel to nullify the right of return. "Come on" they say; "do you really believe this can work out?" Why not? Or is it because Israel is involved, and it has become the norm that no power challenges Israel for its violations of international law. No injustice can be acceptable. Even if it is the norm, it remains immoral and illegal. So why should the Palestinians succumb to this logic and forfeit their right, especially that justice is on their side.
The widow in (Luke 18:1-8) was powerless, but she kept taking her case to the judge who "neither feared God nor cared about men." Yet she was persistent in pleading for "justice against her adversary" until he came to the conclusion that he needs to grant her justice so that she will stop bothering him and eventually wear him out. I do not think as Palestinians we have bothered the world conscience enough. We are the ones who have been worn out, and victimized. And to add insult to injury we have been labeled "terrorists." It is high time we are granted justice against our adversary.
The partition scheme in 1948 never worked out because it lacked justice and was based on creating a Jewish State on the land that was meant to be for all its citizens. With the present inequity, how do we envisage that a much smaller percentage of Palestine surrounded by an Apartheid Wall would be acceptable and will guarantee a viable and comprehensive peace. At the same time, if Israel is to be an exclusively Jewish State, how can it survive as a democratic and Jewish State when over 20% of its citizens are non Jewish. In the long run Israel will have to face this dilemma. Will an apartheid Jewish state guarantee its peace and security?
I was hoping that those experienced diplomats involved in the Geneva Initiative would have come up with an innovative solution to respond to the needs of both people. Maybe they should have thought of the one state solution which could help Israel in solving its dilemma, and it would help the Palestinians in realizing their right of return.
The effort that was put in the details of the Geneva Initiative seems a very serious effort, but likewise a similar effort could have been put in finding an inclusive and just structure for a binational democratic state that can be the solution for a comprehensive and viable peace amongst all the people who are destined to share this Holy Land without barriers or walls.
3. Peace Agreements and Public Participation – Lessons Learned
BADIL Occasional Bulletin No. 15 December 2003
This Bulletin aims to provide a brief overview of issues related to Palestinian Refugee Rights
Peace agreements—provisions on rights, refugees and participation: The following is the final part of a three-part series analyzing provisions in recent peace agreements. It deals with public participation. Parts I and II dealt with provisions on human rights and refugees in these agreements.
Always talked about but never included
Since the post-World War I Paris Peace Conference, Palestinians have been talked about, argued over and decided for but rarely included in any peace process.
Peace agreements are usually the result of negotiations between or among political elites followed by international assistance to facilitate implementation. It is the general public, however, who provide the best guarantee for effective implementation of peace agreements.
Agreements entail more than an end to conflict. They also address important questions related to the fundamental principles governing inter-state relations, the relationship between a state and its citizens (including human rights protections), legislative, executive, and judicial powers, good governance, and the allocation of state resources.
Public participation is therefore essential. Including the public at an early stage is critical for determining its will, not only in relation to ending the conflict, but also in determining the shape of the final peace. Public participation strengthens democratic principles and structures, expands the range of solutions to complex issues, lends greater legitimacy to agreements, engenders broad public ownership of the agreement and contributes to its long-term durability.
Recent comparative study of peace processes in protracted conflicts suggests that “where a peace process enables broad-based participation and public debate, intensely conflictual issues can be reclaimed as the normal subjects of political dialogue, problem-solving and constructive action.” This creates an environment where antagonists can more effectively resolve root causes of the conflict and ultimately take steps towards reconciliation rather than just conflict management.*
The following bulletin provides a brief review of the role of the public in the Palestinian-Israeli negotiation process and an overview of public participation in comparative perspective.
Palestinian-Israeli Negotiations
The Palestinian-Israeli peacemaking process has provided few opportunities for public participation, whether representative, consultative or direct. Historically, the Palestinian people have been denied the basic right to participate in key decisions concerning the conflict in Palestine.
During the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, following the end of WWI, for example, the major powers ignored the wishes of the Palestinian people in the selection of the Mandatory power for Palestine. “[W]e do not propose even to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country.” For the major powers, the imposition of British rule in Palestine and the establishment of a Jewish national homeland in the country was “of far profounder import than the desires and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land.”
In 1947, the UN held consultations in the region concerning the future of the country, but then chose to ignore the wishes of the overwhelming majority of Palestinians who favored the established of a democratic state with equal rights for both Arabs and Jews rather than partition along ethno-national and religious lines. For the next several decades Palestinians and their leadership were largely excluded from successive peacemaking efforts.
It was not until the late 1980s that major international powers, most notably the United States, recognized the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people and as the designated interlocutor at the official level for peace negotiations. Peacemaking efforts, however, continued to exclude both consultative and direct forms of public participation.
Acceptance of the PLO as the body mandated to negotiate on behalf of the Palestinian people, however, came at a price. The PLO was required to forego the agenda set by the people themselves: liberation of their historic homeland and establishment of a democratic state. Palestinians were forced to accept UN Security Council Resolution
242 and the notion of ‘land for peace’ as the basis for a negotiated solution to the conflict.
The PLO had previously rejected Resolution 242 because it left Israel “many loopholes” for the continued occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. It also ignored “the right of the refugees to return to their homes.” The resolution also lacked a clear legal framework for ending the conflict. In addition, the notion of ‘land for peace’ always assumed that there was a mutual exchange between the parties when in reality there is and was an aysmetrical relationship with Palestinians having neither land (which Israel was to withdraw from) nor peace (which they were required to provide).
Nevertheless, and at an early stage, Palestinians attempted to create the space for their involvement in the peacemaking process through both consultative and direct forms of participation. In the early 1950s, for example, refugees organized committees to raise their demands before relevant UN bodies such as the UN Conciliation Commission for Palestine (UNCCP). After meeting with refugees in Beirut, the Commission noted that it “was impressed by expressions of these spokesmen for the return of refugees to their homes to live there in peace with their neighbors.” The establishment of the PLO in 1964 constituted a new form of representative participation for the Palestinian people.
Exclusion gives rise to self-organization
Exclusion of refugees from the peacemaking process that began in Madrid in 1991 and continued in Oslo, combined with demands for better representation from their own leadership, gave rise to initiatives of political self-organization among refugee communities in the 1967 occupied West Bank, eastern Jerusalem, and Gaza Strip, inside Israel, and in the diaspora. These initiatives were as much an expression of concern about the exclusion of specific rights and demands of refugees as they were about the popular demand for better representation and the democratization of the ‘Middle East Peace Process.’
A series of popular refugee conferences inside Israel followed by similar conferences across the West Bank, Gaza Strip, in 1995-1996 set out the basic principles, proposed structures, and mechanisms of a popular campaign for refugee rights. The campaign was to be a broad-based, non-sectarian, independent movement comprised of Palestinian popular organizations and initiatives (refugee and non-refugee) in the homeland and in the diaspora to pressure and lobby for the protection of Palestinian refugee rights and a durable solution based on UN resolutions and international law.
The proposed structures – popular refugee committees, popular conferences, elected refugee councils and a General Palestinian Refugee Conference held inside the historic homeland and in the diaspora each with an elected General Refugee Council – had the aim of providing a popular mechanism for the struggle for legitimate national rights, democracy, civil and human rights, not replacing the PLO. In effect, self-organization was a means to take back the space that had been usurped from the refugees, among others. It was a means to assert their right to have rights.
Nevertheless, international actors and national leaders have been reluctant to create space for public participation in the peacemaking process. Camp David I and II, the secret Oslo negotiations, the subsequent talks over interim arrangements, and the most recent Road Map, all failed to provide scope for public participation. Representative participation was further weakened when part of the PLO political infrastructure resettled in Gaza under the terms of Oslo as the Palestinian Authority, only responsible for Palestinians in the occupied territories, and the exclusion of Palestinians outside these territories from elections for the newly established legislative council.
Moreover, these negotiations and related agreements shifted from an agenda articulated by civil society to one that was subject to political pressures. This is particularly evident in relation to the issue of Palestinian refugees. Refugees were more often than not considered as objects of humanitarian assistance rather than individuals with rights and as legitimate actors in the peacemaking process. “The refugees themselves were assessed, surveyed, quantified, classified, tested, and their living standards, housing conditions, economic and social interests became the objects of study. The refugees themselves were nowhere to be found.”** Moreover, as Israeli historian Ilan Pappe, has observed, the exclusion of refugees has effectively de-historicised the conflict, which no longer has an origin, and thus no longer the necessary means and mechanisms to resolve it.
More recent unofficial initiatives, including the Nusseibeh-Ayalon plan and the Geneva understandings also fail to incorporate room for effective public participation. While these initiatives may be considered as a form of quasi-civil society peacemaking they are, in the final analysis, understandings drafted between political elites. Both present the public with, in effect, a fait accompli, a take it or leave deal, much like the one former President Clinton and former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered to Palestinians at Camp David in July 2000. Subsequent attempts to garner popular support for these initiatives are just that, and not a serious effort to bring the public into the peacemaking process in a way that allows they themselves to shape the contours of peace.
These initiatives stand in contrast to other attempts to bring the public into the peacemaking process. In September 2000, for example, an all-Party British Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry came to the region to ask refugees how they envisioned a solution to their plight. Hearings were held in refugee camps in the West Bank, Gaza, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. The hearings, which were later transcribed and published, constituted a form of participation through open consultation. They allowed refugees to define the parameters of a solution and elicited many creative options.
Public Participation in Comparative Perspective
There are various forms of participation can take: the public may be represented in negotiations by political parties and/or other organized sectors of civil society. Consultative mechanisms may be established to allow the public to voice its concerns, demands, and visions for a durable peace. Individuals may also directly participate in peacemaking, providing the opportunity to both formulate and implement agreements to resolve the conflict.
Experience shows that mechanisms for public participation in peace processes do not just materialize. People have to make them happen. Nevertheless, there are many useful examples of public involvement in peacemaking processes around the world*.
In Mali during the mid-1990s, well-respected local figures organized more than 50 community meetings in areas of the country where reconciliation was most difficult. The number of participants ranged from several hundred to more than 1,000. Village elders, religious and community leaders took responsibility for negotiating local arrangements to control arms, reintegrate displaced people and fighters and other sensitive issues. These local attempts at public peacemaking, supported by Norwegian Church Aid, followed the collapse of a government initiative to involve different sectors of Mali society in the process. Conclusions of the local meetings were eventually funneled into a broader, consolidated process.
The Convention for a Democratic South Africa (CODESA) attempted to provide an opening for some 27 organized groups, including political parties, trade unions and religious institutions, to negotiate a political settlement and lay the foundations for a new constitution. Delegates were chosen through a proportional representation list system and those selected were split into working groups around thematic issues with a rotating chair. Each group was assigned a resource person who researched and advised participants on best practices elsewhere in the world. Due to escalating violence and disagreements on the transitional process CODESA was eventually disbanded. But many of the ideas that had emerged were later included in subsequent multi-party negotiations. The public was also brought into the process over the new constitution through community-level consultation meetings held across the country. People could also contribute their ideas in written submissions dropped off at collection boxes in public locations.
In Northern Ireland, non-sectarian activists, many from the non-governmental sector, established a public forum known as Initiative 92. Its aim was to allow the general public to discuss central issues of the conflict that were otherwise raised in public discourse only by militants. Public hearings, organized by a seven-member commission chaired by an outside facilitator, were held across the country. The hearings were transcribed and published as a book which became the basis for follow-up activities aimed at stimulating public debate about the conflict and frameworks for peace.
The Guatemalan peace process also provided a significant degree of latitude for public participation. In the late 1980s the National Reconciliation Commission, comprised of representatives of 12 political parties, the government, the army and the Roman Catholic Church, organized a Grand National Dialogue. Nearly 50 different sectoral interest groups, including unions, business associations, and cooperatives participated with thematic commissions focusing on key issues of the conflict.
These talks contributed to the development of a general framework agreement. An elected assembly, which included representatives of 10 different social sectors, indigenous people and women, was subsequently authorized to draft papers on seven major issues to be resolved through the ongoing negotiations. However, the assembly began to lose influence as civil society leaders assumed new political positions and as talks assumed an increasingly bi-partisan format between the government and rebel forces.
Guatemalan refugees, moreover, organized themselves into commissions (Comisiones Permanentes) under which refugee leaders directly negotiated the terms of their return. These included public guarantee of their security; assurance of the right to return to lands; the right to organize and freely associate; guarantee that they would be subject to civilian and not military authority; and, the right to return under supervision of international observers. Refugee women subsequently organized themselves around their common objective to return to Guatemala and negotiate adequate conditions for themselves and their families. As several commentators have observed, refugees in Guatemala did not wait for peace, they helped forge it. Broad public participation also contributed to the democratization of institutionalized systems of exclusion.
In both Mozambique and Papua-New Guinea, grassroots initiatives including the involvement of church and women’s groups played an innovative role in developing and implementing peace agreements as well as in helping to consolidate the peace.
Public inclusion facilitates implementation
Political negotiators are often reluctant to open up the space for public involvement in the peacemaking process. Comparative experience, however, suggests that public participation, whether representative, consultative or direct, facilitates implementation of agreements and strengthens the durability of a negotiated peace.
A peacemaking process that fails to provide for public participation may exacerbate public mistrust and undermine the legitimacy of the agreement. Consultation on the contents of an agreement after it has been negotiated and signed is likely to be of only limited value because it is difficult to incorporate substantive input into the agreement at that stage. Peace agreements negotiated without adequate public participation may in fact be a trigger for further disagreements rather than reconciliation.
Public participation also provides a safeguard against a process that merely “recycles old power to re-legitimise it through new structures.” International involvement in the peacemaking process should strengthen and compliment initiatives for public participation rather than displace local ownership of the process or shift the agenda away from the priorities articulated by civil society.
*****
For a list of Principles to Guide Policy and Practice on public participation in peacemaking visit Conciliation Resources: http://www.c-r.org/pubs/occ_papers/PP_policy.shtml
* Catherine Barnes. Owning the Process: Mechanisms for Political Participation of the Public in Peacemaking. Joint Analysis Workshop Report, Conciliation Resources, 2002.
** Karma Nabulsi. Popular Sovereignty, Collective Rights, Participation and Crafting Durable Solutiosn for Palestinian Refugees. BADIL Working Paper No. 4, April 2003.
Wednesday, December 17
Tuesday, December 9
MCC Palestine Update #90
MCC Palestine Update #90
December 9, 2003
Prepare the way of the Lord! proclaimed John the Baptist from the hills of the Judean desert running down from the MCC office in East Jerusalem towards the Jordan Valley. John called on his listeners to repent, to turn around, and to prepare for a new reality. In Palestine/Israel this Advent season, Palestinians (Christian and Muslim) and Israeli Jews are worn out and exhausted by the current reality of violence, economic upheaval, and occupation. They await a new reality.
Mennonite Central Committee in Palestine works alongside churches and church insitutions that believe that the good news of Jesus Christ, the incarnation of God's nonviolent love, helps to turn people away from commitments to violence towards commitments to nonviolence. MCC also works with Israeli and Palestinian groups dedicated to helping turn people away from occupation and violent resistance against it and towards a future of peace and reconciliation built on foundations of justice. The Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center equips the local Palestinian churches with resources to proclaim the coming of the Lord. The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions prepares the way of the Lord by bringing Palestinians and Israelis toegether to rebuild Palestinian homes unjustly destroyed. As we on the MCC Palestine team prepare our hearts this Advent for the Lord's coming, we give thanks for the faithful witness of the Palestinian churches and of Palestinian and Israeli peacebuilders who, through their words and deeds, are making ready a way for Christ's coming.
MCC project update:
The Women's Training Program of the East Jerusalem YMCA began a training course for women in al-Jadawel area between Beit Jala and the Aida refugee camp. Your prayers for the training, which builds women's skills in livestock management, domestic gardening, conservation of natural resources, and dealing with finances, are solicited.
Mennonite Church USA has created a bulletin insert for congregational use this Advent, soliciting prayers for peace for the people of Bethlehem. You can access this worship resource at http://peace.mennolink.org/resources/bethlehem.pdf/.
Below you will find two pieces. The first, by Haaretz journalist Gideon Levy, examines what he describes as "an amazing combination of utter indifference and astonishing ignorance" among Israelis concerning the new realtieis being created by the "security fence"/"apartheid barrier." In the second, Haaretz journalist Danny Rubinstein takes a trip to Zububa village in the northern West Bank to see the impact of the barrier on that town.
--Alain Epp Weaver
1. Trying to hide the dark backyard
Gideon Levy
Haaretz, December 7, 2003
How many Israelis have actually seen the separation fence? How many have given any thought to its significance? Every foreign visitor interested in what is happening in the region makes visiting the fence a priority and world media constantly point their cameras at it - half a dozen foreign documentaries have already been shot along it. But most Israelis have never seen it. This ambitious strategic project that is going to make fundamental changes to the lnd, the landscape and relations between the peples, is passing through us with an amazing comination of utter indifference and astonishing ignorance.
Since the start of the settlement enterprise, which also took place with eyes deliberately closed in national blindness, there has not been a venture that with such speed created a new reality without any real discussion of its significance. Even environmental activists haven't piped up about how it is ripping up the landscape.
Just like the settlements, the project was started by the Labor Party while the Likud gave it the proper momentum, and just like the settlements, it will be a tragedy to be suffered for generations to come. Another year or in five, and the truth about the damage it caused will become evident, and then, just as with the settlements, it will be too late. After the settlements fulfilled their destructive purposes and capabilities, the separation fence is the next fateful obstacle Israel is putting up on the path to reconciliation with the Palestinians.
When its construction is completed, the two-state solution will be even further removed and practically impossible. The settlements and the fence are complementary and supplementary, together they form a victorious proposition - that with them in place it will never be possible to reach an equitable peace.
There's no doubt the people want a fence. The polls show that most Israelis are convinced that separation from the Palestinian people is a magic formula for eliminating terror and that the fence is the guarantee of it. Together with other mendacious myths, Ehud Barak is also largely responsible for that, by turning the separation concept into a vision. But Barak's mantra of "us here and them there" quickly turned into "them there and us here and also over there."
Palestinians are corralled into ghettos beyond the fence and Israelis remain on both sides. The result being carved into the hills and dales of the land separate not only Israelis and Palestinians, but also Palestinians from Palestinians. The vision of separation espoused by Barak, Haim Ramon and Benjamin Ben-Eliezer has turned into a vision of apartheid.
The first outrageous aspect of this is the harm down to the tens of thousands of Palestinian families after they went through all the tribulations of the occupation - closures, land grabs, house demolitions, humiliations, checkpoints and the settlers in their midst. Now they are being torn form their fields, work places and schools, from their families and the centers of their life, living behind a fence.
"Good fences make good neighbors?" No they don't, not when the fence goes through the neighbor's backyard, over his land, and displaces the neighbors from their own land. That makes for bad neighbors. Some 75,000 Palestinians who find themselves in fenced-in enclaves, some 100,000 residents of the northern Jerusalem neighborhoods cut off from the city and the thousands of farmers already displaced from their land, are the next reservoir of hatred and despair and the new infrastructure of terror.
Israel wanted a security fence as a response to terror? It could have been so simple. It should have put it up on the Green Line, without any deviations. Israel wants separation from the Palestinians? It's so simple - it should evacuate the settlements.
Indeed, the fence does not signal good tidings for the future of relations between the nations. Instead of seeking to establish two open civil societies, living side by side in cooperation, as is desirable and possible, a wall is going up. However, even if it is sad to think that Israel converted its expressed desire for peace and conciliation into separation, if the fence had gone up on the Green Line it would have been impossible to complain about a nation trying to defend itself, and despite the serious problems that fence would have created, it would have been possible to live with it. But the fence is being built in a large part of Palestinian territory. On that route, nobody can accept the argument that the fence is apolitical. Like other occupation measures - especially the settlements and checkpoints - the fence is being justified by security rationales that only provide cover for their real purpose. That is, smashing the last chance for an agreed upon arrangement between the sides.
The fence therefore means the precise opposite of its declared purpose. It is a fence for the perpetuation of conflict. It won't separate the peoples, but perpetuate the pathological connection between the two peoples, the connection between the occupier and the occupied, blocking any chance for the establishment of a viable Palestinian state.
The fence's construction is heading into its last stretch, from the "Jerusalem envelope" to the "Hebron envelope" and the route in the north, and horrifyingly, "the eastern fence." Soon Israel will find itself behind walls, trying to hide from the horrific reality of its own dark backyard, where it conducts a brutal, ruthless regime of occupation.
As sophisticated as the fence might be and as high as it might go, it will not manage to hide anything. Beyond it, the occupation will continue in all its fury, and Israel's chance of becoming a just society will recede ever further and further away - until it disappears.
2. The tortuous route to Zabuba: The villages along the way are all suffering from the closure. The fence, the walls and the collective punishments have turned everything topsy-turvy
Danny Rubinstein
Haaretz, December 7, 2003
Zabuba is a relatively small West Bank village with a mere 2,000 inhabitants. It is located in the Jenin region and can be reached by traveling north on the Wadi Ara (Iron Valley) highway and turning right at the Megiddo junction. After Kibbutz Givat Oz and the Israeli-Arab villages of Zalfa and Salem, there is an Israel Defense Forces facility alongside the big iron gates that close off the road east to Zabuba. The houses of the village lie beyond the separation fence, which, at this point, more or less runs along the 1967 border.Mohammed Issa Obeidi, head of Zabuba's agricultural association, who is better known as Abu el-Abed, last weekend invited guests to see what the fence has done to his village. But a jeep carrying border policemen, who arrived at the gates, announced it is absolutely forbidden for Israelis to cross over into the Palestinian territories. Abu el-Abed, who was standing a few hundred meters away, said via his mobile phone that it would probably be possible to cross at the Tura roadblock. To do so, it would be necessary to drive south on the Wadi Ara highway and turn in the direction of Katzir and Harish. There the fence goes into the West Bank to effectively annex the settlements of Shaked and Hinanit to Israel and the roadblock at that point allows limited access for Israelis into the West Bank. Most of those who want to cross are Israeli Arabs who have family in the villages on the other side, and the remainder are settlers who wish to reach far-off settlements that do not have bypass roads.Crossing at these roadblocks requires special caution. Cars have to approach the roadblock at a slow speed and must be waved forward by the soldiers. All the vehicles, therefore, stop several dozen meters from the crossing point, waiting for the soldiers to call them forward when they have examined the previous vehicle. It is a long wait. In the past, there have been many attacks at the roadblocks and the soldiers are suspicious of any movement that is contrary to orders. If a car approaches the roadblock without being waved forward by a soldier, it could come under fire. Every month, Palestinians are killed in this way at roadblocks and two lost their lives in the past month while trying to bypass the crossing point. The soldiers propose, and sometimes demand, that the Jews traveling to the settlements wait until there is a convoy that can be accompanied by the IDF, but if one insists, they usually let one go.After crossing, we stopped at the entrance to a small village on the main road, where the owner of a grocery store warned us not to attempt to reach Zabuba through the hills in a regular car. He said the vehicle could get stuck but that it was not dangerous from other points of view. We therefore traveled in a Volkswagen van, passing a tiny point known as Hirbet el-Turam, where the large village of Yabed used to dump its garbage. The spot cannot be missed since there is a pall of smoke there, although an order from the Israeli authorities forbids the Palestinians from bringing their waste matter there now. According to the van's driver, Israeli garbage trucks, accompanied by IDF troops, come every few days to unload garbage from the settlements, as well as from inside the Green Line. "We are good enough to collect your garbage," he explains.It is a 20-kilometer ride to Zabuba along tortuous roads. Last Saturday, it took an hour and a half. Many of the village roads were covered with pits, and in some places, the soldiers had placed piles of rocks. Olive and almond orchards lined the dry river banks and the paths through the fields we passed. From time to time, we had to stop to let yellow minibuses pass. With a little imagination, you could think you were in the Sahara on an adventure ride, except there were no sportsmen enjoying the fun but simply regular passengers, including women, children and elderly people. This is how one travels in the West Bank these past two years or so.What strikes one in Zabuba, as in many places in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, is that all the older men speak fluent Hebrew. Abu el-Abed, like his friend the council head Mohammed Yussef Jarradat, worked for years in Israel and had many Jewish friends and acquaintances. Zabuba lies close to the main road, about four kilometers from the Megiddo junction, from where there is easy access to Afula in the east, Hadera in the southwest and Haifa in the northwest. In fact, all the men in the village had worked in Israel, most of them in construction or some other manual labor. The younger men know less Hebrew. The 25-30 age group, for example, has hardly visited or worked in Israel and therefore knows little Hebrew. In the first years of closures after the Oslo Accords, most of the villagers still worked for Jewish employers, even though they did not have the necessary papers. Their number diminished over the years, however. Now that the fence is in place, no one works in Israel any more and all of them are unemployed.The only solution is for the villagers to try to live off agriculture. The village used to have almost 14,000 dunams of fertile land at the southern tip of the Jezreel Valley. According to the Arab lexicon, "Our land, Palestine," written by Mustafa Dabbagh, most of the village's lands belong to the Christian el-Moutran family from Lebanon. They lost their lands in 1948 since most of them fell inside Israel and the Ta'anach region villages were set up there. The home of the effendi, Najib el-Moutran, still stands in the center of the village, a little palace. It was recently refurbished with the help of a Jerusalem Christian fund and now houses the village council and a computer room for youngsters.A large banner hangs from the wall of the council chamber: "Stop the cancer - the racist separation fence." Some 200 dunams belonging to 95 Zabuba families were confiscated for the construction of the fence. On most of these lands were olive groves that had been the main source of income for the families over the past few years. Prior to that, large tracts of land had been taken over by the IDF for military purposes, such as the setting up of the nearby roadblock and facility. Today all the villagers have left is some 500 dunams and some of these are across the border and a special permit is required to reach them.The fence has effectively shut off Zabuba since the eastern access to Jenin or the southern access to Nablus are fraught with numerous difficulties. Those few villagers who have permits to work in Israel have problems getting through the various roadblocks. They first have to pass through the one at Arrabe, which opens only at 6 A.M., and then get to Jenin and the Jalemeh roadblock, so that they arrive in Afula only at about 10 A.M. "No one wants workers who arrive at 10," the council head says. There is no clinic in Zabuba, for example, and it is extremely complicated to get to a doctor in Jenin. Two villagers who recently made a pilgrimage to Mecca say the road from Zabuba to the bridge in Jericho took them 16 hours, almost as long as the 1,200 kilometers from Jericho to Saudi Arabia.The road back to the Tura crossing point, through the mountains, is equally tortuous. The villages en route are all suffering from the closure. The fence, the walls and the collective punishments imposed on the Palestinian population may have lessened the number of bombings inside Israel but they have turned everything topsy-turvy inside the territories. The entire population, according to the Nablus economist Hisham Awarthani, "is busy night and day trying to survive and dreaming of revenge." Indeed, the impression one gets from a visit to Zabuba is that no one cares about the Geneva Accord or Abu Ala's new government and all that interests them is the degradation they are undergoing and the desire to inflict similar pain on the Israelis.
December 9, 2003
Prepare the way of the Lord! proclaimed John the Baptist from the hills of the Judean desert running down from the MCC office in East Jerusalem towards the Jordan Valley. John called on his listeners to repent, to turn around, and to prepare for a new reality. In Palestine/Israel this Advent season, Palestinians (Christian and Muslim) and Israeli Jews are worn out and exhausted by the current reality of violence, economic upheaval, and occupation. They await a new reality.
Mennonite Central Committee in Palestine works alongside churches and church insitutions that believe that the good news of Jesus Christ, the incarnation of God's nonviolent love, helps to turn people away from commitments to violence towards commitments to nonviolence. MCC also works with Israeli and Palestinian groups dedicated to helping turn people away from occupation and violent resistance against it and towards a future of peace and reconciliation built on foundations of justice. The Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center equips the local Palestinian churches with resources to proclaim the coming of the Lord. The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions prepares the way of the Lord by bringing Palestinians and Israelis toegether to rebuild Palestinian homes unjustly destroyed. As we on the MCC Palestine team prepare our hearts this Advent for the Lord's coming, we give thanks for the faithful witness of the Palestinian churches and of Palestinian and Israeli peacebuilders who, through their words and deeds, are making ready a way for Christ's coming.
MCC project update:
The Women's Training Program of the East Jerusalem YMCA began a training course for women in al-Jadawel area between Beit Jala and the Aida refugee camp. Your prayers for the training, which builds women's skills in livestock management, domestic gardening, conservation of natural resources, and dealing with finances, are solicited.
Mennonite Church USA has created a bulletin insert for congregational use this Advent, soliciting prayers for peace for the people of Bethlehem. You can access this worship resource at http://peace.mennolink.org/resources/bethlehem.pdf/.
Below you will find two pieces. The first, by Haaretz journalist Gideon Levy, examines what he describes as "an amazing combination of utter indifference and astonishing ignorance" among Israelis concerning the new realtieis being created by the "security fence"/"apartheid barrier." In the second, Haaretz journalist Danny Rubinstein takes a trip to Zububa village in the northern West Bank to see the impact of the barrier on that town.
--Alain Epp Weaver
1. Trying to hide the dark backyard
Gideon Levy
Haaretz, December 7, 2003
How many Israelis have actually seen the separation fence? How many have given any thought to its significance? Every foreign visitor interested in what is happening in the region makes visiting the fence a priority and world media constantly point their cameras at it - half a dozen foreign documentaries have already been shot along it. But most Israelis have never seen it. This ambitious strategic project that is going to make fundamental changes to the lnd, the landscape and relations between the peples, is passing through us with an amazing comination of utter indifference and astonishing ignorance.
Since the start of the settlement enterprise, which also took place with eyes deliberately closed in national blindness, there has not been a venture that with such speed created a new reality without any real discussion of its significance. Even environmental activists haven't piped up about how it is ripping up the landscape.
Just like the settlements, the project was started by the Labor Party while the Likud gave it the proper momentum, and just like the settlements, it will be a tragedy to be suffered for generations to come. Another year or in five, and the truth about the damage it caused will become evident, and then, just as with the settlements, it will be too late. After the settlements fulfilled their destructive purposes and capabilities, the separation fence is the next fateful obstacle Israel is putting up on the path to reconciliation with the Palestinians.
When its construction is completed, the two-state solution will be even further removed and practically impossible. The settlements and the fence are complementary and supplementary, together they form a victorious proposition - that with them in place it will never be possible to reach an equitable peace.
There's no doubt the people want a fence. The polls show that most Israelis are convinced that separation from the Palestinian people is a magic formula for eliminating terror and that the fence is the guarantee of it. Together with other mendacious myths, Ehud Barak is also largely responsible for that, by turning the separation concept into a vision. But Barak's mantra of "us here and them there" quickly turned into "them there and us here and also over there."
Palestinians are corralled into ghettos beyond the fence and Israelis remain on both sides. The result being carved into the hills and dales of the land separate not only Israelis and Palestinians, but also Palestinians from Palestinians. The vision of separation espoused by Barak, Haim Ramon and Benjamin Ben-Eliezer has turned into a vision of apartheid.
The first outrageous aspect of this is the harm down to the tens of thousands of Palestinian families after they went through all the tribulations of the occupation - closures, land grabs, house demolitions, humiliations, checkpoints and the settlers in their midst. Now they are being torn form their fields, work places and schools, from their families and the centers of their life, living behind a fence.
"Good fences make good neighbors?" No they don't, not when the fence goes through the neighbor's backyard, over his land, and displaces the neighbors from their own land. That makes for bad neighbors. Some 75,000 Palestinians who find themselves in fenced-in enclaves, some 100,000 residents of the northern Jerusalem neighborhoods cut off from the city and the thousands of farmers already displaced from their land, are the next reservoir of hatred and despair and the new infrastructure of terror.
Israel wanted a security fence as a response to terror? It could have been so simple. It should have put it up on the Green Line, without any deviations. Israel wants separation from the Palestinians? It's so simple - it should evacuate the settlements.
Indeed, the fence does not signal good tidings for the future of relations between the nations. Instead of seeking to establish two open civil societies, living side by side in cooperation, as is desirable and possible, a wall is going up. However, even if it is sad to think that Israel converted its expressed desire for peace and conciliation into separation, if the fence had gone up on the Green Line it would have been impossible to complain about a nation trying to defend itself, and despite the serious problems that fence would have created, it would have been possible to live with it. But the fence is being built in a large part of Palestinian territory. On that route, nobody can accept the argument that the fence is apolitical. Like other occupation measures - especially the settlements and checkpoints - the fence is being justified by security rationales that only provide cover for their real purpose. That is, smashing the last chance for an agreed upon arrangement between the sides.
The fence therefore means the precise opposite of its declared purpose. It is a fence for the perpetuation of conflict. It won't separate the peoples, but perpetuate the pathological connection between the two peoples, the connection between the occupier and the occupied, blocking any chance for the establishment of a viable Palestinian state.
The fence's construction is heading into its last stretch, from the "Jerusalem envelope" to the "Hebron envelope" and the route in the north, and horrifyingly, "the eastern fence." Soon Israel will find itself behind walls, trying to hide from the horrific reality of its own dark backyard, where it conducts a brutal, ruthless regime of occupation.
As sophisticated as the fence might be and as high as it might go, it will not manage to hide anything. Beyond it, the occupation will continue in all its fury, and Israel's chance of becoming a just society will recede ever further and further away - until it disappears.
2. The tortuous route to Zabuba: The villages along the way are all suffering from the closure. The fence, the walls and the collective punishments have turned everything topsy-turvy
Danny Rubinstein
Haaretz, December 7, 2003
Zabuba is a relatively small West Bank village with a mere 2,000 inhabitants. It is located in the Jenin region and can be reached by traveling north on the Wadi Ara (Iron Valley) highway and turning right at the Megiddo junction. After Kibbutz Givat Oz and the Israeli-Arab villages of Zalfa and Salem, there is an Israel Defense Forces facility alongside the big iron gates that close off the road east to Zabuba. The houses of the village lie beyond the separation fence, which, at this point, more or less runs along the 1967 border.Mohammed Issa Obeidi, head of Zabuba's agricultural association, who is better known as Abu el-Abed, last weekend invited guests to see what the fence has done to his village. But a jeep carrying border policemen, who arrived at the gates, announced it is absolutely forbidden for Israelis to cross over into the Palestinian territories. Abu el-Abed, who was standing a few hundred meters away, said via his mobile phone that it would probably be possible to cross at the Tura roadblock. To do so, it would be necessary to drive south on the Wadi Ara highway and turn in the direction of Katzir and Harish. There the fence goes into the West Bank to effectively annex the settlements of Shaked and Hinanit to Israel and the roadblock at that point allows limited access for Israelis into the West Bank. Most of those who want to cross are Israeli Arabs who have family in the villages on the other side, and the remainder are settlers who wish to reach far-off settlements that do not have bypass roads.Crossing at these roadblocks requires special caution. Cars have to approach the roadblock at a slow speed and must be waved forward by the soldiers. All the vehicles, therefore, stop several dozen meters from the crossing point, waiting for the soldiers to call them forward when they have examined the previous vehicle. It is a long wait. In the past, there have been many attacks at the roadblocks and the soldiers are suspicious of any movement that is contrary to orders. If a car approaches the roadblock without being waved forward by a soldier, it could come under fire. Every month, Palestinians are killed in this way at roadblocks and two lost their lives in the past month while trying to bypass the crossing point. The soldiers propose, and sometimes demand, that the Jews traveling to the settlements wait until there is a convoy that can be accompanied by the IDF, but if one insists, they usually let one go.After crossing, we stopped at the entrance to a small village on the main road, where the owner of a grocery store warned us not to attempt to reach Zabuba through the hills in a regular car. He said the vehicle could get stuck but that it was not dangerous from other points of view. We therefore traveled in a Volkswagen van, passing a tiny point known as Hirbet el-Turam, where the large village of Yabed used to dump its garbage. The spot cannot be missed since there is a pall of smoke there, although an order from the Israeli authorities forbids the Palestinians from bringing their waste matter there now. According to the van's driver, Israeli garbage trucks, accompanied by IDF troops, come every few days to unload garbage from the settlements, as well as from inside the Green Line. "We are good enough to collect your garbage," he explains.It is a 20-kilometer ride to Zabuba along tortuous roads. Last Saturday, it took an hour and a half. Many of the village roads were covered with pits, and in some places, the soldiers had placed piles of rocks. Olive and almond orchards lined the dry river banks and the paths through the fields we passed. From time to time, we had to stop to let yellow minibuses pass. With a little imagination, you could think you were in the Sahara on an adventure ride, except there were no sportsmen enjoying the fun but simply regular passengers, including women, children and elderly people. This is how one travels in the West Bank these past two years or so.What strikes one in Zabuba, as in many places in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, is that all the older men speak fluent Hebrew. Abu el-Abed, like his friend the council head Mohammed Yussef Jarradat, worked for years in Israel and had many Jewish friends and acquaintances. Zabuba lies close to the main road, about four kilometers from the Megiddo junction, from where there is easy access to Afula in the east, Hadera in the southwest and Haifa in the northwest. In fact, all the men in the village had worked in Israel, most of them in construction or some other manual labor. The younger men know less Hebrew. The 25-30 age group, for example, has hardly visited or worked in Israel and therefore knows little Hebrew. In the first years of closures after the Oslo Accords, most of the villagers still worked for Jewish employers, even though they did not have the necessary papers. Their number diminished over the years, however. Now that the fence is in place, no one works in Israel any more and all of them are unemployed.The only solution is for the villagers to try to live off agriculture. The village used to have almost 14,000 dunams of fertile land at the southern tip of the Jezreel Valley. According to the Arab lexicon, "Our land, Palestine," written by Mustafa Dabbagh, most of the village's lands belong to the Christian el-Moutran family from Lebanon. They lost their lands in 1948 since most of them fell inside Israel and the Ta'anach region villages were set up there. The home of the effendi, Najib el-Moutran, still stands in the center of the village, a little palace. It was recently refurbished with the help of a Jerusalem Christian fund and now houses the village council and a computer room for youngsters.A large banner hangs from the wall of the council chamber: "Stop the cancer - the racist separation fence." Some 200 dunams belonging to 95 Zabuba families were confiscated for the construction of the fence. On most of these lands were olive groves that had been the main source of income for the families over the past few years. Prior to that, large tracts of land had been taken over by the IDF for military purposes, such as the setting up of the nearby roadblock and facility. Today all the villagers have left is some 500 dunams and some of these are across the border and a special permit is required to reach them.The fence has effectively shut off Zabuba since the eastern access to Jenin or the southern access to Nablus are fraught with numerous difficulties. Those few villagers who have permits to work in Israel have problems getting through the various roadblocks. They first have to pass through the one at Arrabe, which opens only at 6 A.M., and then get to Jenin and the Jalemeh roadblock, so that they arrive in Afula only at about 10 A.M. "No one wants workers who arrive at 10," the council head says. There is no clinic in Zabuba, for example, and it is extremely complicated to get to a doctor in Jenin. Two villagers who recently made a pilgrimage to Mecca say the road from Zabuba to the bridge in Jericho took them 16 hours, almost as long as the 1,200 kilometers from Jericho to Saudi Arabia.The road back to the Tura crossing point, through the mountains, is equally tortuous. The villages en route are all suffering from the closure. The fence, the walls and the collective punishments imposed on the Palestinian population may have lessened the number of bombings inside Israel but they have turned everything topsy-turvy inside the territories. The entire population, according to the Nablus economist Hisham Awarthani, "is busy night and day trying to survive and dreaming of revenge." Indeed, the impression one gets from a visit to Zabuba is that no one cares about the Geneva Accord or Abu Ala's new government and all that interests them is the degradation they are undergoing and the desire to inflict similar pain on the Israelis.
Thursday, November 27
MCC Palestine Update #89
MCC Palestine Update #89
November 27, 2003
This past week my family and I had two good friends as guests for five days: our former landlady from Zababdeh, the northern West Bank village where we once taught English, and her three-year-old daughter. Our friend had come to Jerusalem to check in on her ten-year-old son, who lives as a boarding student with nuns in a Jerusalem convent and had fallen ill. Getting into Jerusalem, however, was no simple matter. Our friend and her daughter left Zababdeh at 2 am, setting out for a five hour drive to the Qalandia checkpoint in northern Jerusalem. The drive took them and their fellow passengers through multiple back roads and in and out of olive fields. Once in Qalandia, her journey was not yet over. She took another taxi all around Jerusalem, down to Abu Dis to the south of the city. There, she and her 3-year-old faced an 7 to 8 foot obstacle made of concrete blocks. Like hundreds of Palestinians do everyday, our friend and her daughter found a place in the wall made of concrete blocks where they could find footholds. Once on top, our friend lowered her daughter down. As they were climbing over, our friend's daughter kept telling her to hurry. "The soldiers will come!" the daughter said: the entire trip down in the car, the daughter had been talking to her mother about her fear of the soldiers. The soldiers, fortunately, did not come, and our friend (who, as you have probably guessed) did not have a permit to be in Jerusalem, made it to the convent where she could see her sick son. Our friend and her children made it back to Zababdeh earlier this week.
As my family and I celebrate U.S. Thanksgiving Day tomorrow, we'll be giving thanks for the love that pushes mothers, fathers, and grandparents every day to cross through and find difficult ways around military roadblocks in order to care for their sick children; we'll be giving thanks for the faithful institutions of the Palestinian churches that minister to all children, Christian and Muslim alike; we'll be giving thanks for the witness of those young Israeli men who refuse to participate in the daily rituals of humiliation and control at checkpoints in the occupied territories; and we'll be giving thanks for Palestinian and Israeli peacemakers who work for a shared future of justice, peace, and reconciliation.
Below you will find three pieces. In the first, Haaretz journalist Gideon Levy summarizes the memoirs of Staff Sgt. Liran Ron Furer, a young Israeli man in his mid-20s who has written an account of his three years of military service in the Gaza Strip. Furer's accout of his actions at the checkpoints where he worked are troubling, haunting, and give a disturbing insight into how the occupation and its military roadblocks and checkpoints are dehumanizing not only Palestinians but Israelis as well. The second piece, by MCC's partner organization on Palestinian refugee issues, Badil, examines how human rights standards, including those that address refugees, will have to be incorporated into any lasting peace agreement, any agreement, that is, that seeks to be "conflict resolution" rather than "conflict management." In the final piece, Haaretz journalist Danny Rubinstein examines what he calls the "strangulation fence" and its effect on Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank.
--Alain Epp Weaver
1. Twilight Zone: ‘I punched an Arab in the face’
Gideon Levy
Haaretz, 21 November 2003
Staff Sergeant (res.) Liran Ron Furer cannot just routinely get on with his life anymore. He is haunted by images from his three years of military service in Gaza and the thought that this could be a syndrome afflicting everyone who serves at checkpoints gives him no respite. On the verge of completing his studies in the design program at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, he decided to drop everything and devote all his time to the book he wanted to write. The major publishers he brought it to declined to publish it. The publisher that finally accepted it (Gevanim) says that the Steimatzky bookstore chain refuses to distribute it. But Furer is determined to bring his book to the public's attention. "You can adopt the most hard-line political positions, but no parent would agree to his son becoming a thief, a criminal or a violent person," says Furer. "The problem is that it's never presented this way. The boy himself doesn't portray himself this way to his family when he returns from the territories. On the contrary - he is received as a hero, as someone who is doing the important work of being a soldier. No one can be indifferent to the fact that there are many families in which, in a certain sense, there are already two generations of criminals. The father went through it and now the son is going through it and no one talks about it around the dinner table." Furer is certain that what happened to him is not at all unique. Here he was - a creative, sensitive graduate of the Thelma Yellin High School of the Arts, who became an animal at the checkpoint, a violent sadist who beat up Palestinians because they didn't show him the proper courtesy, who shot out tires of cars because their owners were playing the radio too loud, who abused a retarded teenage boy lying handcuffed on the floor of the Jeep, just because he had to take his anger out somehow. "Checkpoint Syndrome" (also the title of his book), gradually transforms every soldier into an animal, he maintains, regardless of whatever values he brings with him from home. No one can escape its taint. In a place where nearly everything is permissible and violence is perceived as normative behavior, each soldier tests his own limits of violence impulsiveness on his victims - the Palestinians. His book is not easy reading. Written in terse, fierce prose, in the blunt and coarse language of soldiers, he reconstructs scenes from the years in which he served in Gaza (1996-1999), years that, one must remember, were relatively quiet. He describes how he and his comrades forced some Palestinians to sing "Elinor" - "It was really something to see these Arabs singing a Zohar Argov song, like in a movie"; the emotions the Palestinians aroused in him - "Sometimes these Arabs really disgust me, especially those that try to toady up to us - the older ones, who come to the checkpoint with this smile on their faces"; the reactions they spurred - "If they really annoy us, we find away to keep them stuck at the checkpoint for a few hours. They lose a whole day of work because of it sometimes, but that's the only way they learn." He described how they would order children to clean the checkpoint before inspection time; how a soldier named Shahar invented a game: "He checks someone's identity card, and instead of handing it back to him, just tosses it in the air. He got a kick out of seeing the Arab have to get out of his car to pick up his identity card ... It's a game for him and he can pass a whole shift this way"; how they humiliated a dwarf who came to the checkpoint every day on his wagon: "They forced him to have his picture taken on the horse, hit him and degraded him for a good half hour and let him go only when cars arrived at the checkpoint. The poor guy, he really didn't deserve it"; how they had a souvenir picture taken with bloodied, bound Arabs whom they'd beaten up; how Shahar pissed on the head of an Arab because the man had the nerve to smile at a soldier; how Dado forced an Arab to stand on four legs and bark like a dog; and how they stole prayer beads and cigarettes - "Miro wanted them to give him their cigarettes, the Arabs didn't want to give so Miro broke someone's hand, and Boaz slashed their tires." Chilling confession The most chilling of all the personal confessions: "I ran toward them and punched an Arab right in the face. I'd never punched anyone that way. He collapsed on the road. The officers said that we had to search him for his papers. We pulled his hands behind his back and I bound them with plastic handcuffs. Then we blindfolded him so he wouldn't see what was in the Jeep. I picked him up from the road. Blood was trickling from his lip onto his chin. I led him up behind the Jeep and threw him in, his knees banged against the trunk and he landed inside. We sat in the back, stepping on the Arab ... Our Arab lay there pretty quietly, just crying softly to himself. His face was right on my flak jacket and he was bleeding and making a kind of puddle of blood and saliva, and it disgusted and angered me, so I grabbed him by the hair and turned his head to the side. He cried out loud and to get him to stop, we stepped harder and harder on his back. That quieted him down for a while and then he started up again. We concluded that he was either retarded or crazy. "The company commander informed us over the radio that we had to bring him to the base. `Good work, tigers,' he said, teasing us. All the other soldiers were waiting there to see what we'd caught. When we came in with the Jeep, they whistled and applauded wildly. We put the Arab next to the guard. He didn't stop crying and someone who understood Arabic said that his hands were hurting from the handcuffs. One of the soldiers went up to him and kicked him in the stomach. The Arab doubled over and grunted, and we all laughed. It was funny ... I kicked him really hard in the ass and he flew forward just as I'd expected. They shouted that I was a totally crazy, and they laughed ... and I felt happy. Our Arab was just a 16-year-old mentally retarded boy." In his sister's rooftop Tel Aviv apartment, where he is living now, Furer, 26, comes across as a thoughtful, intelligent young man. He grew up in Givatayim, after his parents immigrated from the Soviet Union in the 1970s. Before Yitzhak Rabin's assassination, his mother was a right-wing activist, but he says that their home was not political. He wanted to be in a combat unit in the army, and served in two elite infantry units. He did his entire army service in the Gaza Strip. After the army, he traveled to India, like so many others. "Now I was free. The crazy energies of Goa and the chakras opened my mind ... You stuck me in this stinking Gaza and before that you brainwashed me with your rifles and your marches, you turned me into a dishrag that didn't think anymore," he wrote from Goa. But it was only afterward, when he was studying at Bezalel, that the experiences from his army service really began to affect him. "I came to realize that there was an unchanging pattern here," he says. "It was the same in the first intifada, in the period that I was serving, which was quiet, and in the second intifada. It's become a permanent reality. I started to feel very uncomfortable with the fact that such a loaded subject was hardly mentioned at all in public. People listened to the victim and they listened to the politicians, but this voice that says: I did this, we did things that were wrong - crimes, actually - that's a voice I didn't hear. The reason it wasn't being heard was a combination of repression - just as I repressed it and ignored it - and of deep feelings of guilt. "As soon as you get away from army service, the political and media reality around you is not ready to hear this voice. I remember that I was surprised that no soldier had gone public with this yet. It all somehow dissolved in the debate about the legitimacy of settlement in the territories, about the occupation - for or against - and nothing connected to the routine of maintaining the occupation appeared in the media or in art." Not an individual caseFurer is out to prove that this is a syndrome and not a collection of isolated, individual cases. That's why he deleted a lot of personal details from the original manuscript, in order to underscore the general nature of what he describes. "During my army service, I believed that I was atypical, because I came from a background of art and creativity. I was considered a moderate soldier - but I fell into the same trap that most soldiers fall into. I was carried away by the possibility of acting in the most primal and impulsive manner, without fear of punishment and without oversight. You're tense about it at first, but as you get more comfortable at the checkpoint over time, the behavior becomes more natural. People gradually test the limits of their behavior toward the Palestinians. It gradually becomes coarser and coarser. "The more confident I became with the situation, as soon as we reached the conclusion - each one at his own stage - that we are the rulers, we are the strong ones, and when we felt our power, each one started to stretch the limits more and more, in accordance with his personality. As soon as serving at the checkpoint became routine, all kinds of deviant behavior became normal. It started with `souvenir collecting': We'd confiscate prayer beads and then it was cigarettes and it didn't stop. It became normative behavior. "After that came the power games. We got the message from above that we were to project seriousness and deterrence to the Arabs. Physical violence also became normative. We felt free to punish any Palestinian who didn't follow the `proper code of behavior' at the checkpoint. Anyone we thought wasn't polite enough to us or tried to act smart - was severely punished. It was deliberate harassment on the most trivial pretexts. "During my army service, there wasn't a single incident that made us understand, or made our commanders interfere. No one talked about what was permitted and what was not. It was all a matter of routine. In retrospect, the biggest source of guilt feelings for me didn't happen at the checkpoint, but by the Gush Katif fence, when we caught the retarded boy. I demonstrated the most extreme behavior. It was a chance for me to catch one - the closest thing to catching a terrorist, a chance to vent all the pressure and impulses that had built up in all of us. To lash out the way we wanted to. We were used to giving slaps, to handcuffing, to a little kicking, a little beating, and here was a situation in which it was justified to let go entirely. Also, the officer who was with us was himself very violent. We gave the kid a real beating and as soon as we got to the post, I remember having a great feeling of pride, that I'd been treated like someone strong. They said, `What a nut you are, how crazy you are,' which was basically like saying, `How strong you are.' "At the checkpoint, young people have the chance to be masters and using force and violence becomes legitimate - and this is a much more basic impulse than the political views or values that you bring from home. As soon as using force is given legitimacy, and even rewarded, the tendency is to take it as far as it can go, to exploit it much as possible. To satisfy these impulses beyond what the situation requires. Today, I'd call it sadistic impulses ... "We weren't criminals or especially violent people. We were a group of good boys, a relatively `high-quality' group, and for all of us - and we still talk about this sometimes - the checkpoint became a place to test our personal limits. How tough, how callous, how crazy we could be - and we thought of that in the positive sense. Something about the situation - being in a godforsaken place, far from home, far from oversight - made it justified ... The line of what is forbidden was never precisely drawn. No one was ever punished and they just let us continue. "Today, I feel confident saying that even the most senior ranks - the brigade commander, the battalion commander - are aware of the power that soldiers have in this situation and what they do with it. How could a commander not be aware of it when the more crazy and tough his soldiers are, the quieter his sector is? The more complex picture of the long-term effects of this violent behavior is something you only become conscious of when you get away from the checkpoint. "Today it's clear to me that that boy whose father we humiliated for the flimsiest of reasons will grow up to hate anyone who represents what was done to his father. I definitely have an understanding of their motives now. We are cruelty, we are power. I'm sure that their response is affected by elements related to their society - a disregard for human life and a readiness to sacrifice lives - but the basic desire to resist, the hatred itself, the fear - I feel are completely justified and legitimate, even if it's risky to say so. "It's impossible to be in such an emotional state and to go back home on leave and detach yourself from it. I was very insensitive to the feelings of my girlfriend at the time. I was an animal, even when I was on leave. It also sticks with you after your service. I saw the remnants of the syndrome in India - something about being in the Third World, among dark-skinned people, brings out the worst of the `ugly Israeli,' which is as Israeli as it gets. Or the way you react to a smile: When Palestinians would smile at me at the checkpoint, I got tense and construed it as defiance, as chutzpah. When someone smiled at me in India, I immediately went on the defensive. "I was an average soldier," he says. "I was the joker of the group. Now I see that I was often the one to take the lead in violent situations. I often was the one who gave the slap. I'm the one who came up with all kinds of ideas like letting the air out of tires. It sounds twisted now, but we really admired anyone who could beat up some guy who supposedly had it coming. The officer we admired most was the officer who fired his weapon at every opportunity. Out of everyone I've spoken to, I've been left with the most guilt feelings ... A friend from the army read the book and said that I'm right, that we did bad things, but we were kids. And he said that it's a shame that I took it too hard."
2. Conflict Management or Conflict Resolution
BADIL Occasional Bulletin No. 13November 2003
This Bulletin aims to provide a brief overview of issues related to Palestinian Refugee Rights
Peace agreements--provisions on rights, refugees and participation: This analysis of human rights provisions is the first of a 3-part series on recent agreements. Part Two examines how they deal with refugees and Part Three is on public participation in formulating agreements.
Conflicts are unique and so are the mechanisms set up to resolve them. But in most cases, human rights are considered an important element for conflict resolution.
What makes the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and its resolution particularly unique is the virtual absence, in any peace proposals to date, of human rights regulations or provision for the establishment of human rights institutions. This implies that the two parties have yet to agree on the underlying root causes of the conflict and how they should go about resolving the conflict.
Peace agreements, like national constitutions, replace “the arbitrary use of power with its legal regulation through checks and balances.”* Thus human rights are a key element in a successful agreement, providing a common framework to regulate relations between former antagonists, mediate future disputes and reconcile past injustices.
Many agreements include provisions for new human rights institutions to monitor respect for human rights, educate the general public, hold accountable persons who have violated the human rights of others and investigate and recommend remedies for past violations.
The following is a summary of the role of human rights and the Palestinian-Israeli negotiation process; a comparative overview of human rights provisos in other peace agreements; and observations on recent peacemaking experience.
Missing from the start
Human rights have been marginal to the Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking process that began in Madrid more than a decade ago. The Madrid-Oslo process focused primarily on security and the transfer of certain powers to a limited self-governing authority in 1967 occupied Palestine.
According to the initial framework agreement (1993 Declaration of Principles) Israel and the PLO agreed to recognize “mutual legitimate and political rights” in order to “achieve a just, lasting and comprehensive peace settlement and historic reconciliation through the agreed political process.” There is no mention of international law or the UN Charter as the basic framework for negotiations and future relations between the two.
Subsequent interim agreements include only limited references to human rights. They are first mentioned in the 1994 Gaza-Jericho agreement (Article XIV; Annex I,
Article VIII) in regard to the exercise of “powers and responsibilities” under the agreement. Annex III, Article II also stipulates that the parties to the agreement shall
ensure that persons transferred for criminal investigation will be treated in accordance with accepted human rights norms. The 1995 Interim Agreement (Article XIX; Annex I, Article XI(7), Article 11(7)(h)(1)) and the 1998 Wye River Memorandum (Article II(4)) include similar provisions.
While the agreements include numerous references delineating agreed-upon “rights” of both parties the only reference in the agreements to “legal rights” concerns “Government and Absentee property” that was “acquired” by Israelis in the occupied territories (Interim Agreement, Annex III, Appendix I, Article 16(3) and Article 22(3). Palestinians are obliged under the agreement to respect these rights.
Common to all these agreements is the absence of specific references to internationally accepted human rights norms. None establish human rights institutions to monitor and investigate human rights violations. Moreover, both the Interim agreement (Article XI(1), Annex I) and the Wye River Memorandum (Article II(4)) suggest that internationally accepted norms are subject to the agreement rather than vice versa.
Recent unofficial initiatives on the outlines of a final status agreement follow a similar approach, omitting rights altogether (e.g. Nusseibeh-Ayalon and the Geneva understandings). The latter actually states that where the agreement and the UN Charter conflict, the agreement itself overrides the UN Charter Article 2 (6).
The absence of human rights and international law, in general, from past agreements and current initiatives can be explained in part by looking at some historical background.
Focus on security: Since 1967, peacemaking has largely focused on security based on the political notion of ‘land for peace’ under which Israel would return some conquered land in the occupied territories for a lasting peace agreement. This incorrectly implies a symmetrical relationship between the parties and that Palestinians have peace and only need land. Human rights norms are secondary and their inclusion has been undermined or even cast aside when they interfere with Israel’s security considerations.
Unwillingness to recognize certain rights: Recognition of certain rights such as refugees’ right to return to their homes of origin could lead, in Israel’s view, to unacceptable political outcomes. Human rights interfere with its arbitrary exercise of power.
Unresolved and conflicting narratives/views on the conflict itself: Human rights and international law have played a fundamental role in the Palestinian view of the conflict. Their proposals during pre-Oslo talks in Washington, for example, include key references to international law. Israel disagrees fundamentally, hence the absence of human rights.
Key role of human rights in other agreements
Human rights are a key element in peace agreements, playing a particularly important regulatory role in ethno-national conflicts. Agreements in Bosnia, Kosovo, Burundi, and Rwanda, for example, contain particularly detailed human rights provisions. In general, they delineate applicable norms; provide for legal, including constitutional, reform to incorporate greater recognition of human rights principles; and establish institutions to monitor, investigate and adjudicate future and past human rights violations.
The peace agreements in Bosnia Herzegovina, Kosovo, Burundi, Cambodia, East Timor, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Rwanda all have specific reference to applicable international human rights conventions and most delineate specific human rights. A list of 14 international human rights instruments to be applied in Bosnia Herzegovina is even annexed to the 1995 Dayton Agreements.
Provisions for constitutional reform to strengthen recognition of human rights norms are also included. The constitution attached to the 1999 Interim Agreement for Peace and Self-Government in Kosovo, for example, states that the rights and freedoms set forth in the European Convention for the Protection of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms and its Protocols shall apply directly in Kosovo and have priority over all other law. Similar provisions for constitutional reform are found in Bosnia and Cambodia.
Education is also an important component of peacebuilding. The 2000 Arusha Peace and Reconciliation Agreement for Burundi, for example, calls for a major educational and awareness program for peace, unity and reconciliation. In Cambodia, the UN transition administration was required to develop and implement educational programs to promote respect for and understanding of human rights. In Sierra Leone, the parties pledged to promote human rights education through schools, media, police, military and the religious community.
Mechanisms to monitor respect for human rights, investigate and provide remedies for future human rights violations also feature in some agreements. The 1994 Protocol of Agreement between the Government of the Republic of Rwanda and the Rwandan Patriotic Front on the Rule of Law establishes an independent National Commission on Human Rights to investigate human rights violations and use the findings to sensitize and educate the public on human rights and bring legal proceedings where necessary.
Similar commissions are provided for in the Sierra Leone, Liberia, Cote d’Ivoire, Guatemala, Afghanistan, Cambodia, Burundi, Bosnia, and Kosovo agreements. Remedies for victims of human rights violations include compensation.
Some establish independent mechanisms to investigate and prosecute individuals found responsible for past grave human rights violations. The Burundi agreement, for example, asks the UN Security Council to establish an international criminal tribunal to try and punish those responsible for acts of genocide, war crimes and other crimes against humanity. The Comprehensive Agreement on Human Rights in Guatemala (1994) establishes a Commission to clarify past violations and issue recommendations to encourage peace and national harmony. Agreements in Cote d’Ivoire, Sierra Leone, and Rwanda establish similar mechanisms for transitional justice.
Finally, many agreements also include provisions to commemorate the victims of human rights violations. The Arusha agreement (Burundi) calls for a national monument in memory of all victims of genocide, war crimes and other crimes against humanity and a national day of remembrance. The Guatemala agreement requires measures to preserve the memory of the victims to foster a culture of mutual respect and observance of human rights and to strengthen the democratic process.
Human rights, the common framework
Human rights are sine qua non for a peace agreement. Human rights provisions may not provide ironclad guarantees that violations will not recur, but they provide a common framework to regulate relations between former antagonists, resolve future disputes, rehabilitate victims of past violations, and ensure that no individual or party is above the law and can act with impunity.
As numerous human rights organizations have observed, recent experience around the world has shown the legitimacy and sustainability of political processes are strengthened, not weakened, by the inclusion of human rights standards. Disregarding human rights, or subordinating these rights to political considerations, can only undermine the prospects of achieving durable peace and security.
The inability of the international community to effectively monitor and enforce human rights in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, and the lack of political support to ensure codification of such principles and the establishment of corresponding human rights mechanisms in peace agreements between Israel and the PLO has led to a situation where the peacemaking process continues to be governed by the arbitrary use of power.
A deeper problem
The virtual absence of human rights from Palestinian-Israeli peace agreements and current political initiatives also points to a deeper problem. Comparative experience
suggests that human rights provisions in peace agreements stem from agreement between the parties about the function and role of human rights and, therefore, an agreement about the nature of the conflict itself and related remedies.
The absence of human rights in existing agreements and recent initiatives thus implies that the parties have yet to agree on the underlying root causes of their conflict. Such agreements and initiatives can, at best, provide for conflict management, but cannot be seen as resolving all outstanding claims between Israel and the Palestinians or providing just and durable solutions for Palestinians and Israelis alike.
Past experience, community involvement and the rule of law are three major components of any peace and reconciliation plan, according to BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights. BADIL promotes research into these areas, encourages Palestinian community participation in formulating peace agreements and organizes fact-finding visits to areas repairing the damage of conflict such as South Africa and Bosnia-Herzogovina.
***
* Christine Bell, Peace Agreements and Human Rights, 2000
3. A strangulation fence
Danny Rubinstein
Haaretz, 24 November 2003
Despite all the criticism of the separation fence both in Israel and abroad, a majority of the Israeli public is still enthusiastic about it (83 percent support it, as opposed to 12 percent who are against it, according to the Peace Index of October, 2003, as published in Haaretz on November 4). This enthusiasm clearly has a security background, but also a political background. Everyone who wants to arrive at the solution of two states for two peoples supports separation between the two entities - and if separation, then why not a fence?
A certain enthusiasm for separation between the two peoples has prevailed in Israel ever since the occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in 1967. Moshe Dayan, who laid down the lines of Israeli policy in the territories after the Six Day War, favored maximum possible integration between Israel and the territories - but he too called again and again for "not getting into the Palestinians." That is, to minimize as much as possible a permanent Israeli presence in heavily populated areas and not to fly the Israeli flag in every corner of Judea, Samaria and Gaza. He wanted the Arabs in the territories to manage their civil affairs themselves. "My father didn't come to Degania and Nahalal in order to run the education system in Nablus or the orchards in Gaza," he once said.
Yitzhak Rabin's electioneering slogan "Get Gaza out of Tel Aviv" was one of the reasons for his success in the 1992 elections - and another call for separation formulated as "We here and they there" was among one of Ehud Barak's popular statements.
The bloody clashes and the terror attacks of the Al Aqsa Intifada of course brought the Israeli support for separation and the construction of the fence to a peak. Among the supporters of the fence in Israel are hawks and doves, centrists, leftists and rightists. In short, nearly everyone.
Among the Palestinian public, the picture is different. Their main sources of employment are in Israel, and they also want free access to the centers of commerce, medical services and recreational sites in Israel. But the official Palestinian position cannot be opposed in principle to the fence; they oppose only any deviation of the separation wall from the Green Line (the pre-June 1967 border). Palestinian spokespersons have frequently stated: Israel is entitled to build as many fences and walls as it wants - but only inside its own territories and not in the Palestinian territories.
The Palestine Liberation Organization steering committee, which convened at Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat's headquarters at the end of last week, decided that the Palestinians will apply to the International Court of Justice in The Hague to file a suit against the construction of the fence. In Jerusalem, the head of the Islamic courts Sheikh Rajib Bayyud al Tamimi (whom Arafat appointed about a year ago), announced the launching of a public struggle against the fence in the city, as its aim is to "strengthen the Judaization of Jerusalem."
The deviations of the fence from the old 1967 border into the territories are not a marginal issue in the affair. They are the main issue. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his government ministers, who support the fence, are exploiting the large public support that there is in Israel for ideas of separation in order to build fences and walls. However, more than these stand between Israelis and Palestinians - they are creating, in a large part of the West Bank, a reality of siege and distress in which the Palestinians cannot live. It sometimes seems that most of the Israeli public that so yearns for separation and security does not realize that in fact a wall of strangulation is being built in the West Bank and Jerusalem.
November 27, 2003
This past week my family and I had two good friends as guests for five days: our former landlady from Zababdeh, the northern West Bank village where we once taught English, and her three-year-old daughter. Our friend had come to Jerusalem to check in on her ten-year-old son, who lives as a boarding student with nuns in a Jerusalem convent and had fallen ill. Getting into Jerusalem, however, was no simple matter. Our friend and her daughter left Zababdeh at 2 am, setting out for a five hour drive to the Qalandia checkpoint in northern Jerusalem. The drive took them and their fellow passengers through multiple back roads and in and out of olive fields. Once in Qalandia, her journey was not yet over. She took another taxi all around Jerusalem, down to Abu Dis to the south of the city. There, she and her 3-year-old faced an 7 to 8 foot obstacle made of concrete blocks. Like hundreds of Palestinians do everyday, our friend and her daughter found a place in the wall made of concrete blocks where they could find footholds. Once on top, our friend lowered her daughter down. As they were climbing over, our friend's daughter kept telling her to hurry. "The soldiers will come!" the daughter said: the entire trip down in the car, the daughter had been talking to her mother about her fear of the soldiers. The soldiers, fortunately, did not come, and our friend (who, as you have probably guessed) did not have a permit to be in Jerusalem, made it to the convent where she could see her sick son. Our friend and her children made it back to Zababdeh earlier this week.
As my family and I celebrate U.S. Thanksgiving Day tomorrow, we'll be giving thanks for the love that pushes mothers, fathers, and grandparents every day to cross through and find difficult ways around military roadblocks in order to care for their sick children; we'll be giving thanks for the faithful institutions of the Palestinian churches that minister to all children, Christian and Muslim alike; we'll be giving thanks for the witness of those young Israeli men who refuse to participate in the daily rituals of humiliation and control at checkpoints in the occupied territories; and we'll be giving thanks for Palestinian and Israeli peacemakers who work for a shared future of justice, peace, and reconciliation.
Below you will find three pieces. In the first, Haaretz journalist Gideon Levy summarizes the memoirs of Staff Sgt. Liran Ron Furer, a young Israeli man in his mid-20s who has written an account of his three years of military service in the Gaza Strip. Furer's accout of his actions at the checkpoints where he worked are troubling, haunting, and give a disturbing insight into how the occupation and its military roadblocks and checkpoints are dehumanizing not only Palestinians but Israelis as well. The second piece, by MCC's partner organization on Palestinian refugee issues, Badil, examines how human rights standards, including those that address refugees, will have to be incorporated into any lasting peace agreement, any agreement, that is, that seeks to be "conflict resolution" rather than "conflict management." In the final piece, Haaretz journalist Danny Rubinstein examines what he calls the "strangulation fence" and its effect on Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank.
--Alain Epp Weaver
1. Twilight Zone: ‘I punched an Arab in the face’
Gideon Levy
Haaretz, 21 November 2003
Staff Sergeant (res.) Liran Ron Furer cannot just routinely get on with his life anymore. He is haunted by images from his three years of military service in Gaza and the thought that this could be a syndrome afflicting everyone who serves at checkpoints gives him no respite. On the verge of completing his studies in the design program at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, he decided to drop everything and devote all his time to the book he wanted to write. The major publishers he brought it to declined to publish it. The publisher that finally accepted it (Gevanim) says that the Steimatzky bookstore chain refuses to distribute it. But Furer is determined to bring his book to the public's attention. "You can adopt the most hard-line political positions, but no parent would agree to his son becoming a thief, a criminal or a violent person," says Furer. "The problem is that it's never presented this way. The boy himself doesn't portray himself this way to his family when he returns from the territories. On the contrary - he is received as a hero, as someone who is doing the important work of being a soldier. No one can be indifferent to the fact that there are many families in which, in a certain sense, there are already two generations of criminals. The father went through it and now the son is going through it and no one talks about it around the dinner table." Furer is certain that what happened to him is not at all unique. Here he was - a creative, sensitive graduate of the Thelma Yellin High School of the Arts, who became an animal at the checkpoint, a violent sadist who beat up Palestinians because they didn't show him the proper courtesy, who shot out tires of cars because their owners were playing the radio too loud, who abused a retarded teenage boy lying handcuffed on the floor of the Jeep, just because he had to take his anger out somehow. "Checkpoint Syndrome" (also the title of his book), gradually transforms every soldier into an animal, he maintains, regardless of whatever values he brings with him from home. No one can escape its taint. In a place where nearly everything is permissible and violence is perceived as normative behavior, each soldier tests his own limits of violence impulsiveness on his victims - the Palestinians. His book is not easy reading. Written in terse, fierce prose, in the blunt and coarse language of soldiers, he reconstructs scenes from the years in which he served in Gaza (1996-1999), years that, one must remember, were relatively quiet. He describes how he and his comrades forced some Palestinians to sing "Elinor" - "It was really something to see these Arabs singing a Zohar Argov song, like in a movie"; the emotions the Palestinians aroused in him - "Sometimes these Arabs really disgust me, especially those that try to toady up to us - the older ones, who come to the checkpoint with this smile on their faces"; the reactions they spurred - "If they really annoy us, we find away to keep them stuck at the checkpoint for a few hours. They lose a whole day of work because of it sometimes, but that's the only way they learn." He described how they would order children to clean the checkpoint before inspection time; how a soldier named Shahar invented a game: "He checks someone's identity card, and instead of handing it back to him, just tosses it in the air. He got a kick out of seeing the Arab have to get out of his car to pick up his identity card ... It's a game for him and he can pass a whole shift this way"; how they humiliated a dwarf who came to the checkpoint every day on his wagon: "They forced him to have his picture taken on the horse, hit him and degraded him for a good half hour and let him go only when cars arrived at the checkpoint. The poor guy, he really didn't deserve it"; how they had a souvenir picture taken with bloodied, bound Arabs whom they'd beaten up; how Shahar pissed on the head of an Arab because the man had the nerve to smile at a soldier; how Dado forced an Arab to stand on four legs and bark like a dog; and how they stole prayer beads and cigarettes - "Miro wanted them to give him their cigarettes, the Arabs didn't want to give so Miro broke someone's hand, and Boaz slashed their tires." Chilling confession The most chilling of all the personal confessions: "I ran toward them and punched an Arab right in the face. I'd never punched anyone that way. He collapsed on the road. The officers said that we had to search him for his papers. We pulled his hands behind his back and I bound them with plastic handcuffs. Then we blindfolded him so he wouldn't see what was in the Jeep. I picked him up from the road. Blood was trickling from his lip onto his chin. I led him up behind the Jeep and threw him in, his knees banged against the trunk and he landed inside. We sat in the back, stepping on the Arab ... Our Arab lay there pretty quietly, just crying softly to himself. His face was right on my flak jacket and he was bleeding and making a kind of puddle of blood and saliva, and it disgusted and angered me, so I grabbed him by the hair and turned his head to the side. He cried out loud and to get him to stop, we stepped harder and harder on his back. That quieted him down for a while and then he started up again. We concluded that he was either retarded or crazy. "The company commander informed us over the radio that we had to bring him to the base. `Good work, tigers,' he said, teasing us. All the other soldiers were waiting there to see what we'd caught. When we came in with the Jeep, they whistled and applauded wildly. We put the Arab next to the guard. He didn't stop crying and someone who understood Arabic said that his hands were hurting from the handcuffs. One of the soldiers went up to him and kicked him in the stomach. The Arab doubled over and grunted, and we all laughed. It was funny ... I kicked him really hard in the ass and he flew forward just as I'd expected. They shouted that I was a totally crazy, and they laughed ... and I felt happy. Our Arab was just a 16-year-old mentally retarded boy." In his sister's rooftop Tel Aviv apartment, where he is living now, Furer, 26, comes across as a thoughtful, intelligent young man. He grew up in Givatayim, after his parents immigrated from the Soviet Union in the 1970s. Before Yitzhak Rabin's assassination, his mother was a right-wing activist, but he says that their home was not political. He wanted to be in a combat unit in the army, and served in two elite infantry units. He did his entire army service in the Gaza Strip. After the army, he traveled to India, like so many others. "Now I was free. The crazy energies of Goa and the chakras opened my mind ... You stuck me in this stinking Gaza and before that you brainwashed me with your rifles and your marches, you turned me into a dishrag that didn't think anymore," he wrote from Goa. But it was only afterward, when he was studying at Bezalel, that the experiences from his army service really began to affect him. "I came to realize that there was an unchanging pattern here," he says. "It was the same in the first intifada, in the period that I was serving, which was quiet, and in the second intifada. It's become a permanent reality. I started to feel very uncomfortable with the fact that such a loaded subject was hardly mentioned at all in public. People listened to the victim and they listened to the politicians, but this voice that says: I did this, we did things that were wrong - crimes, actually - that's a voice I didn't hear. The reason it wasn't being heard was a combination of repression - just as I repressed it and ignored it - and of deep feelings of guilt. "As soon as you get away from army service, the political and media reality around you is not ready to hear this voice. I remember that I was surprised that no soldier had gone public with this yet. It all somehow dissolved in the debate about the legitimacy of settlement in the territories, about the occupation - for or against - and nothing connected to the routine of maintaining the occupation appeared in the media or in art." Not an individual caseFurer is out to prove that this is a syndrome and not a collection of isolated, individual cases. That's why he deleted a lot of personal details from the original manuscript, in order to underscore the general nature of what he describes. "During my army service, I believed that I was atypical, because I came from a background of art and creativity. I was considered a moderate soldier - but I fell into the same trap that most soldiers fall into. I was carried away by the possibility of acting in the most primal and impulsive manner, without fear of punishment and without oversight. You're tense about it at first, but as you get more comfortable at the checkpoint over time, the behavior becomes more natural. People gradually test the limits of their behavior toward the Palestinians. It gradually becomes coarser and coarser. "The more confident I became with the situation, as soon as we reached the conclusion - each one at his own stage - that we are the rulers, we are the strong ones, and when we felt our power, each one started to stretch the limits more and more, in accordance with his personality. As soon as serving at the checkpoint became routine, all kinds of deviant behavior became normal. It started with `souvenir collecting': We'd confiscate prayer beads and then it was cigarettes and it didn't stop. It became normative behavior. "After that came the power games. We got the message from above that we were to project seriousness and deterrence to the Arabs. Physical violence also became normative. We felt free to punish any Palestinian who didn't follow the `proper code of behavior' at the checkpoint. Anyone we thought wasn't polite enough to us or tried to act smart - was severely punished. It was deliberate harassment on the most trivial pretexts. "During my army service, there wasn't a single incident that made us understand, or made our commanders interfere. No one talked about what was permitted and what was not. It was all a matter of routine. In retrospect, the biggest source of guilt feelings for me didn't happen at the checkpoint, but by the Gush Katif fence, when we caught the retarded boy. I demonstrated the most extreme behavior. It was a chance for me to catch one - the closest thing to catching a terrorist, a chance to vent all the pressure and impulses that had built up in all of us. To lash out the way we wanted to. We were used to giving slaps, to handcuffing, to a little kicking, a little beating, and here was a situation in which it was justified to let go entirely. Also, the officer who was with us was himself very violent. We gave the kid a real beating and as soon as we got to the post, I remember having a great feeling of pride, that I'd been treated like someone strong. They said, `What a nut you are, how crazy you are,' which was basically like saying, `How strong you are.' "At the checkpoint, young people have the chance to be masters and using force and violence becomes legitimate - and this is a much more basic impulse than the political views or values that you bring from home. As soon as using force is given legitimacy, and even rewarded, the tendency is to take it as far as it can go, to exploit it much as possible. To satisfy these impulses beyond what the situation requires. Today, I'd call it sadistic impulses ... "We weren't criminals or especially violent people. We were a group of good boys, a relatively `high-quality' group, and for all of us - and we still talk about this sometimes - the checkpoint became a place to test our personal limits. How tough, how callous, how crazy we could be - and we thought of that in the positive sense. Something about the situation - being in a godforsaken place, far from home, far from oversight - made it justified ... The line of what is forbidden was never precisely drawn. No one was ever punished and they just let us continue. "Today, I feel confident saying that even the most senior ranks - the brigade commander, the battalion commander - are aware of the power that soldiers have in this situation and what they do with it. How could a commander not be aware of it when the more crazy and tough his soldiers are, the quieter his sector is? The more complex picture of the long-term effects of this violent behavior is something you only become conscious of when you get away from the checkpoint. "Today it's clear to me that that boy whose father we humiliated for the flimsiest of reasons will grow up to hate anyone who represents what was done to his father. I definitely have an understanding of their motives now. We are cruelty, we are power. I'm sure that their response is affected by elements related to their society - a disregard for human life and a readiness to sacrifice lives - but the basic desire to resist, the hatred itself, the fear - I feel are completely justified and legitimate, even if it's risky to say so. "It's impossible to be in such an emotional state and to go back home on leave and detach yourself from it. I was very insensitive to the feelings of my girlfriend at the time. I was an animal, even when I was on leave. It also sticks with you after your service. I saw the remnants of the syndrome in India - something about being in the Third World, among dark-skinned people, brings out the worst of the `ugly Israeli,' which is as Israeli as it gets. Or the way you react to a smile: When Palestinians would smile at me at the checkpoint, I got tense and construed it as defiance, as chutzpah. When someone smiled at me in India, I immediately went on the defensive. "I was an average soldier," he says. "I was the joker of the group. Now I see that I was often the one to take the lead in violent situations. I often was the one who gave the slap. I'm the one who came up with all kinds of ideas like letting the air out of tires. It sounds twisted now, but we really admired anyone who could beat up some guy who supposedly had it coming. The officer we admired most was the officer who fired his weapon at every opportunity. Out of everyone I've spoken to, I've been left with the most guilt feelings ... A friend from the army read the book and said that I'm right, that we did bad things, but we were kids. And he said that it's a shame that I took it too hard."
2. Conflict Management or Conflict Resolution
BADIL Occasional Bulletin No. 13November 2003
This Bulletin aims to provide a brief overview of issues related to Palestinian Refugee Rights
Peace agreements--provisions on rights, refugees and participation: This analysis of human rights provisions is the first of a 3-part series on recent agreements. Part Two examines how they deal with refugees and Part Three is on public participation in formulating agreements.
Conflicts are unique and so are the mechanisms set up to resolve them. But in most cases, human rights are considered an important element for conflict resolution.
What makes the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and its resolution particularly unique is the virtual absence, in any peace proposals to date, of human rights regulations or provision for the establishment of human rights institutions. This implies that the two parties have yet to agree on the underlying root causes of the conflict and how they should go about resolving the conflict.
Peace agreements, like national constitutions, replace “the arbitrary use of power with its legal regulation through checks and balances.”* Thus human rights are a key element in a successful agreement, providing a common framework to regulate relations between former antagonists, mediate future disputes and reconcile past injustices.
Many agreements include provisions for new human rights institutions to monitor respect for human rights, educate the general public, hold accountable persons who have violated the human rights of others and investigate and recommend remedies for past violations.
The following is a summary of the role of human rights and the Palestinian-Israeli negotiation process; a comparative overview of human rights provisos in other peace agreements; and observations on recent peacemaking experience.
Missing from the start
Human rights have been marginal to the Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking process that began in Madrid more than a decade ago. The Madrid-Oslo process focused primarily on security and the transfer of certain powers to a limited self-governing authority in 1967 occupied Palestine.
According to the initial framework agreement (1993 Declaration of Principles) Israel and the PLO agreed to recognize “mutual legitimate and political rights” in order to “achieve a just, lasting and comprehensive peace settlement and historic reconciliation through the agreed political process.” There is no mention of international law or the UN Charter as the basic framework for negotiations and future relations between the two.
Subsequent interim agreements include only limited references to human rights. They are first mentioned in the 1994 Gaza-Jericho agreement (Article XIV; Annex I,
Article VIII) in regard to the exercise of “powers and responsibilities” under the agreement. Annex III, Article II also stipulates that the parties to the agreement shall
ensure that persons transferred for criminal investigation will be treated in accordance with accepted human rights norms. The 1995 Interim Agreement (Article XIX; Annex I, Article XI(7), Article 11(7)(h)(1)) and the 1998 Wye River Memorandum (Article II(4)) include similar provisions.
While the agreements include numerous references delineating agreed-upon “rights” of both parties the only reference in the agreements to “legal rights” concerns “Government and Absentee property” that was “acquired” by Israelis in the occupied territories (Interim Agreement, Annex III, Appendix I, Article 16(3) and Article 22(3). Palestinians are obliged under the agreement to respect these rights.
Common to all these agreements is the absence of specific references to internationally accepted human rights norms. None establish human rights institutions to monitor and investigate human rights violations. Moreover, both the Interim agreement (Article XI(1), Annex I) and the Wye River Memorandum (Article II(4)) suggest that internationally accepted norms are subject to the agreement rather than vice versa.
Recent unofficial initiatives on the outlines of a final status agreement follow a similar approach, omitting rights altogether (e.g. Nusseibeh-Ayalon and the Geneva understandings). The latter actually states that where the agreement and the UN Charter conflict, the agreement itself overrides the UN Charter Article 2 (6).
The absence of human rights and international law, in general, from past agreements and current initiatives can be explained in part by looking at some historical background.
Focus on security: Since 1967, peacemaking has largely focused on security based on the political notion of ‘land for peace’ under which Israel would return some conquered land in the occupied territories for a lasting peace agreement. This incorrectly implies a symmetrical relationship between the parties and that Palestinians have peace and only need land. Human rights norms are secondary and their inclusion has been undermined or even cast aside when they interfere with Israel’s security considerations.
Unwillingness to recognize certain rights: Recognition of certain rights such as refugees’ right to return to their homes of origin could lead, in Israel’s view, to unacceptable political outcomes. Human rights interfere with its arbitrary exercise of power.
Unresolved and conflicting narratives/views on the conflict itself: Human rights and international law have played a fundamental role in the Palestinian view of the conflict. Their proposals during pre-Oslo talks in Washington, for example, include key references to international law. Israel disagrees fundamentally, hence the absence of human rights.
Key role of human rights in other agreements
Human rights are a key element in peace agreements, playing a particularly important regulatory role in ethno-national conflicts. Agreements in Bosnia, Kosovo, Burundi, and Rwanda, for example, contain particularly detailed human rights provisions. In general, they delineate applicable norms; provide for legal, including constitutional, reform to incorporate greater recognition of human rights principles; and establish institutions to monitor, investigate and adjudicate future and past human rights violations.
The peace agreements in Bosnia Herzegovina, Kosovo, Burundi, Cambodia, East Timor, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Rwanda all have specific reference to applicable international human rights conventions and most delineate specific human rights. A list of 14 international human rights instruments to be applied in Bosnia Herzegovina is even annexed to the 1995 Dayton Agreements.
Provisions for constitutional reform to strengthen recognition of human rights norms are also included. The constitution attached to the 1999 Interim Agreement for Peace and Self-Government in Kosovo, for example, states that the rights and freedoms set forth in the European Convention for the Protection of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms and its Protocols shall apply directly in Kosovo and have priority over all other law. Similar provisions for constitutional reform are found in Bosnia and Cambodia.
Education is also an important component of peacebuilding. The 2000 Arusha Peace and Reconciliation Agreement for Burundi, for example, calls for a major educational and awareness program for peace, unity and reconciliation. In Cambodia, the UN transition administration was required to develop and implement educational programs to promote respect for and understanding of human rights. In Sierra Leone, the parties pledged to promote human rights education through schools, media, police, military and the religious community.
Mechanisms to monitor respect for human rights, investigate and provide remedies for future human rights violations also feature in some agreements. The 1994 Protocol of Agreement between the Government of the Republic of Rwanda and the Rwandan Patriotic Front on the Rule of Law establishes an independent National Commission on Human Rights to investigate human rights violations and use the findings to sensitize and educate the public on human rights and bring legal proceedings where necessary.
Similar commissions are provided for in the Sierra Leone, Liberia, Cote d’Ivoire, Guatemala, Afghanistan, Cambodia, Burundi, Bosnia, and Kosovo agreements. Remedies for victims of human rights violations include compensation.
Some establish independent mechanisms to investigate and prosecute individuals found responsible for past grave human rights violations. The Burundi agreement, for example, asks the UN Security Council to establish an international criminal tribunal to try and punish those responsible for acts of genocide, war crimes and other crimes against humanity. The Comprehensive Agreement on Human Rights in Guatemala (1994) establishes a Commission to clarify past violations and issue recommendations to encourage peace and national harmony. Agreements in Cote d’Ivoire, Sierra Leone, and Rwanda establish similar mechanisms for transitional justice.
Finally, many agreements also include provisions to commemorate the victims of human rights violations. The Arusha agreement (Burundi) calls for a national monument in memory of all victims of genocide, war crimes and other crimes against humanity and a national day of remembrance. The Guatemala agreement requires measures to preserve the memory of the victims to foster a culture of mutual respect and observance of human rights and to strengthen the democratic process.
Human rights, the common framework
Human rights are sine qua non for a peace agreement. Human rights provisions may not provide ironclad guarantees that violations will not recur, but they provide a common framework to regulate relations between former antagonists, resolve future disputes, rehabilitate victims of past violations, and ensure that no individual or party is above the law and can act with impunity.
As numerous human rights organizations have observed, recent experience around the world has shown the legitimacy and sustainability of political processes are strengthened, not weakened, by the inclusion of human rights standards. Disregarding human rights, or subordinating these rights to political considerations, can only undermine the prospects of achieving durable peace and security.
The inability of the international community to effectively monitor and enforce human rights in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, and the lack of political support to ensure codification of such principles and the establishment of corresponding human rights mechanisms in peace agreements between Israel and the PLO has led to a situation where the peacemaking process continues to be governed by the arbitrary use of power.
A deeper problem
The virtual absence of human rights from Palestinian-Israeli peace agreements and current political initiatives also points to a deeper problem. Comparative experience
suggests that human rights provisions in peace agreements stem from agreement between the parties about the function and role of human rights and, therefore, an agreement about the nature of the conflict itself and related remedies.
The absence of human rights in existing agreements and recent initiatives thus implies that the parties have yet to agree on the underlying root causes of their conflict. Such agreements and initiatives can, at best, provide for conflict management, but cannot be seen as resolving all outstanding claims between Israel and the Palestinians or providing just and durable solutions for Palestinians and Israelis alike.
Past experience, community involvement and the rule of law are three major components of any peace and reconciliation plan, according to BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights. BADIL promotes research into these areas, encourages Palestinian community participation in formulating peace agreements and organizes fact-finding visits to areas repairing the damage of conflict such as South Africa and Bosnia-Herzogovina.
***
* Christine Bell, Peace Agreements and Human Rights, 2000
3. A strangulation fence
Danny Rubinstein
Haaretz, 24 November 2003
Despite all the criticism of the separation fence both in Israel and abroad, a majority of the Israeli public is still enthusiastic about it (83 percent support it, as opposed to 12 percent who are against it, according to the Peace Index of October, 2003, as published in Haaretz on November 4). This enthusiasm clearly has a security background, but also a political background. Everyone who wants to arrive at the solution of two states for two peoples supports separation between the two entities - and if separation, then why not a fence?
A certain enthusiasm for separation between the two peoples has prevailed in Israel ever since the occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in 1967. Moshe Dayan, who laid down the lines of Israeli policy in the territories after the Six Day War, favored maximum possible integration between Israel and the territories - but he too called again and again for "not getting into the Palestinians." That is, to minimize as much as possible a permanent Israeli presence in heavily populated areas and not to fly the Israeli flag in every corner of Judea, Samaria and Gaza. He wanted the Arabs in the territories to manage their civil affairs themselves. "My father didn't come to Degania and Nahalal in order to run the education system in Nablus or the orchards in Gaza," he once said.
Yitzhak Rabin's electioneering slogan "Get Gaza out of Tel Aviv" was one of the reasons for his success in the 1992 elections - and another call for separation formulated as "We here and they there" was among one of Ehud Barak's popular statements.
The bloody clashes and the terror attacks of the Al Aqsa Intifada of course brought the Israeli support for separation and the construction of the fence to a peak. Among the supporters of the fence in Israel are hawks and doves, centrists, leftists and rightists. In short, nearly everyone.
Among the Palestinian public, the picture is different. Their main sources of employment are in Israel, and they also want free access to the centers of commerce, medical services and recreational sites in Israel. But the official Palestinian position cannot be opposed in principle to the fence; they oppose only any deviation of the separation wall from the Green Line (the pre-June 1967 border). Palestinian spokespersons have frequently stated: Israel is entitled to build as many fences and walls as it wants - but only inside its own territories and not in the Palestinian territories.
The Palestine Liberation Organization steering committee, which convened at Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat's headquarters at the end of last week, decided that the Palestinians will apply to the International Court of Justice in The Hague to file a suit against the construction of the fence. In Jerusalem, the head of the Islamic courts Sheikh Rajib Bayyud al Tamimi (whom Arafat appointed about a year ago), announced the launching of a public struggle against the fence in the city, as its aim is to "strengthen the Judaization of Jerusalem."
The deviations of the fence from the old 1967 border into the territories are not a marginal issue in the affair. They are the main issue. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his government ministers, who support the fence, are exploiting the large public support that there is in Israel for ideas of separation in order to build fences and walls. However, more than these stand between Israelis and Palestinians - they are creating, in a large part of the West Bank, a reality of siege and distress in which the Palestinians cannot live. It sometimes seems that most of the Israeli public that so yearns for separation and security does not realize that in fact a wall of strangulation is being built in the West Bank and Jerusalem.
Friday, November 14
MCC Palestine Update #88
MCC Palestine Update #88
November 14, 2003
“It was like an earthquake.” That was how Fayez al-Banna of Block G in the refugee camp of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip described the arrival of Israeli tanks and bulldozers that came in October to destroy his four-story building, along with scores of other homes. At least 1250 Palestinians from Rafah camp were left homeless after the October invasions. On Sunday, November 9, MCC joined the Culture and Free Thought Association in distributing food packets and blankets to the families who had lost their homes. While grateful for the assistance, many recipients wanted to know why the world was more or less silent in the face of these house demolitions. Two days later, on November 11, the Israeli military destroyed 15 more homes in Rafah.
This past week has been an international week of action against the apartheid wall being built in the West Bank. MCC’s partner organization, the Palestinian Environmental NGO Network, has been a leader in providing high-quality resources and information about the wall. For stories, facts and figures, information sheets, articles, and powerpoint resources on the wall, go to http://www.stopthewall.org/.
Below you will find four pieces. The first, by Neve Gordon, professor of human rights at Ben Gurion University in the Negev, asks why the world is silent in the face of the apartheid reality being created by the construction of the fence/wall/barrier. The second and third pieces, by Danny Rubinstein and Gideon Levy respectively, look at how Israel is unilaterally realizing its old vision of establishing autonomous Palestinian rule in parts of the occupied territories even while maintaining military control over those territories; Gideon Levy voices a feeling that more and more Palestinians express, namely, that the ongoing existence of the Palestinian Authority allows Israel to have the occupation without assuming any of the responsibilities of an occupying power. In the fourth and final piece, Gideon Levy tells the story of a family from Gaza whose lives were shattered by the most recent “targeted killing” in the Gaza Strip; contrary to Israeli claims that the “targeted killing” did not exact a civilian toll, the reality is one of broken, grieving families.
--Alain Epp Weaver
1. Silence in the Face of Israeli Apatheid: Captives Behind Sharon's Wall
By NEVE GORDON
November 6, 2003
Jerusalem
As the government of the Jewish state forces the Palestinians in ghettos, history must be turning in its grave. Qalqiliya, a city of 45,000, has been surrounded by a concrete wall and only those who are granted permits by the Civil Administration can enter and exit the city's single gate.
Along the West Bank's north western border, an additional 12,000 people are now living in enclaves between the wall and the pre-1967 border. They too have become captives; yet the so-called security wall does not separate these Palestinian residents from Jewish Israelis, but rather from their brethren in the West Bank.
After placing them on small "islands," Israel is now "encouraging" them to leave their ancestral homes by undermining their infrastructure of existence. The goal, so it seems, is to annex the land uninhabited.
More recently, another 15-km of the wall were approved to be built in the midst of East Jerusalem. Ten minutes drive from my Jerusalem apartment, parts of this concrete wall wind between houses in the Abu Dis neighborhood. A new Berlin wall in the making, only this time in the holy city.
This wall will ultimately place approximately 35,000 Palestinians in a ghetto. Not only will they be isolated from their source of livelihood, but the sick will not be able to reach hospitals and the children will not be able to reach schools. Even the cemeteries will be out of bounds.
Think about it, once this Apartheid wall is completed, many Palestinian parents will be living on one side while their adult children will be living on the other. Families will be torn apart.
The wall dividing East Jerusalem clearly exposes Israel's lie, revealing that security is not the government's real objective. To put it simply, how will a wall that separates between Palestinian communities ensure the security of Jewish Israelis?
The facts on the ground lay bare that the Apartheid wall, which was ostensibly built to satisfy security needs, is in fact being used as an extremely efficient weapon of dispossession and abuse. Rhetoric aside, the Palestinians' land is being stolen, basic rights to freedom of movement and livelihood are systematically violated, and the rights to education, health and even burial are contravened. The instruments of violation are not only guns, tanks and airplanes, but Caterpillar bulldozers and Fiat tractors.
If the wall is completed, then 50 percent of the West Bank will be annexed to Israel, and there will be no possibility of creating a viable Palestinian state. Moreover, it will not solve Israel's security problems, but rather exacerbate them. By engendering extreme pressure on the Palestinian people, who are already living under dire circumstances, it fosters their sense that there are no prospects for the future, thus motivating people to join extremist groups like the Hamas and Islamic Jihad; indeed, the wall only increases the hatred towards the occupiers and promotes bloody attacks.
What baffles the Israeli peace camp is the international silence. A state among nations is placing thousands of people in ghettoes, forcing them to live in subhuman conditions, and not even a murmur of protest can be heard from the world leaders.
On November 9th, these international leaders have a unique opportunity to raise their voice against the Apartheid wall and 36 years of Israeli occupation. On this day, the world will be commemorating the 14th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall and the 65th anniversary of "Kristallnacht," the state orchestrated pogrom against Jews in Nazi Germany.
The international leaders should tell Prime Minister Sharon that at this historical moment he has an option between walls and ethnic cleansing, on the one hand, and open borders and freedom, on the other. They should also let him know, in unequivocal terms, that they will use all necessary means to ensure that Israel will choose the latter.
Neve Gordon teaches politics and human rights at Ben-Gurion University and can be reached at ngordon@bgumail.bgu.ac.il
2. Back to that old autonomy
Danny Rubinstein
Haaretz, November 10, 2003
Palestinian spokesmen are sneering at Israel's announcements that the IDF is easing restrictions in Gaza and the territories. One need only look to the PA's news sheet, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, from last Friday, where the lead headline on the story about what happened in Gaza and the West Bank a day earlier was, "The easing fraud."
The story read, "A woman who was shot by occupation soldiers bled to death in her home in Nablus, and an engineer was murdered when he drove by the Tul Karm checkpoint, while four people were injured by the bombing of Khan Yunis and 20 others were arrested in the West Bank." The reports have been accompanied daily by pictures of demolished homes, uprooted and burned olive trees, barbed-wire fences and women and children clearly exposed to rifles.
Last weekend, 12 Palestinians were killed, among them activists from Hamas and Islamic Jihad, but also a child from the Balata refugee camp and another from Gaza.
In Ramallah, they warmly welcomed the removal of the Ein Arik checkpoint, which had closed the western exit from the city. This is a significant easing for the city's residents, who are also waiting for the Sorda checkpoint, which is blocking movement north from Ramallah, to fall. But Arafat Khalef, the mayor of Bitoonyah, where the Ein Arik checkpoint is located, said he has experience with these checkpoints. Some months ago, he said, there was talk of easing the closure, and Israeli tractors tore down the checkpoint, but the easing lasted only three or four days.
The Ein Arik checkpoint is one of 163 in the West Bank (according to a Palestinian count), and Palestinian reports on its removal were alongside dozens of reports on how tight the closure is, the curfew, and other restrictions on movement that were imposed once construction of the separation fence started. In other words, not only has it not been made easier for Palestinians to move in the West Bank, but the opposite is actually true - it is harder and harder to go from place to place.
It is actually doubtful if there were ever harsher restrictions on traveling to the Al-Aqsa mosque on Fridays during the month of Ramadan.
Every road into East Jerusalem last Friday was blocked with checkpoints and hundreds of police officers and soldiers, if not more. In effect, it made it impossible for anyone from the territories to get to the mosque, even if they had the necessary permits. A Jerusalem police spokesman said some 180,000 people reached the mosque, though Waqf management said the number was much lower and most were Israelis.
The Palestinians are also deriding the number of permits granted to enter Israel to work. According to the Palestinian Labor Ministry, this is misleading, because the figures are still trifling compared to the numbers permitted before the intifada. What really stood out last Saturday was a report that 50-year-old Ibrahim Darduna from Gaza had died in Tel Hashomer hospital after being beaten to death by unknown assailants in his place of work in Petah Tikva.
So where is all this leading? Many years ago, Israeli plans for granting Palestinians autonomy were circulating. The best known of these plans was drafted in 1977 by Menachem Begin after he was elected prime minister. The autonomy plan (for residents, not the territories) led the Israeli government and the military rule in the territories to set up settlements, capturing land and spreading the IDF around. The Palestinians rejected the plans, and every Palestinian mayor resigned in 1981, saying they didn't want to serve as tools of the Israeli occupation.
What is happening now in the territories is more or less the Israeli imposition of such a plan of autonomy. And there is no chance it will last.
3. Time to do away with the PA
Gideon Levy
Haaretz, November 9, 2003
This farce should have been ended long ago. If the leaders of the Palestinian Authority had been blessed with a greater measure of self-respect, readiness for personal sacrifice and political audacity, they would have long since declared the PA liquidated and left all the responsibility solely in Israel's hands.
If they were more concerned about the subjects they are supposed to be in charge of - the well-being of their nation - they would have resigned and thereby torn the mask from the false impression of the supposed government and the "state in the making." They would have ceased to be the fig leaf that serves and perpetuates the Israeli occupation. Instead, they cling to the few honors and benefits that Israel continues to confer on a few of them, and they go on lending a hand to the great deception that a sovereign Palestinian Authority and a government with powers exist.
Under a cover of empty titles, they continue to take part in the fraud while many in Israel and elsewhere find it convenient to go on believing that the Israeli occupation of the territories has not reverted to being total, and that there is a Palestinian government. "Ministers," "director-generals," "deputy ministers" and "governors," whose titles are empty and lack any authority, and who cannot rule or make decisions about anything except for the official cars and the VIP cards that enable them to go through checkpoints, continue to make a mockery of their nation and the international community.
Is the Palestinian minister of internal security capable of seeing to the security of even one Palestinian in the face of the assassinations, the helicopters, the soldiers and the troops who burst into homes in the middle of the night? Is the health minister capable of seeing to the health of his nationals, when every soldier at every checkpoint can delay ambulances and patients and when the cities and villages are under lengthy curfew? And what can the agriculture minister do when settlers cut down and uproot hundreds of olive trees without interference or prevent the harvesting of the olives, and when the Israeli army defoliates thousands of dunams of fields and vineyards? And how will the minister of labor ensure jobs for the people, when they cannot even leave their places of residence? What can the transportation minister do when his country is strewn with checkpoints and the Israel Defense Forces is the exclusive sovereign that decides which roads are for Jews only and which Palestinian bus lines will be allowed to operate? The list goes on and on.
On the streets of Ramallah, a passerby joked this weekend: "While the Palestinians were arguing over whether Nasser Yusuf would be appointed interior minister or not, the Israelis finished building the separation fence." The majority of Palestinians have no idea who their cabinet ministers are, and for good reason: most of the small amount of aid they receive comes from organizations such as UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency) and from the local governments, not from the imaginary government.
The most wretched situations of all are the meetings of Palestinian ministers with Israeli ministers. A case in point was the meeting between the finance minister, Salam Fayad (who suspended himself last Thursday), the favorite of the United States and Israel, and Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz, which was intended solely to smooth Mofaz's visit to Washington. It's hard to understand why the Palestinian official agreed to meet with Mofaz - who more than any other Israeli is responsible for the cruel policy toward his nation - only to serve the political needs of the Israeli minister. Why is Israel allowed to boycott Palestinian leaders, above all Yasser Arafat, whereas Palestinian ministers have no similar red lines? While European and American officials decline to visit the office of the Israeli justice minister, which is located in East Jerusalem, the outgoing Palestinian justice minister, Abd al-Karim Abu Salah, together with the minister responsible for prisoners, Hisham Abd al-Razak, met with Justice Minister Yosef Lapid in his office. The Palestinian public has only contempt for such cabinet ministers.
This deception in the form of a supposedly autonomous government and Authority serves the Israeli government above all. The Palestinian
Authority's existence allows Israel to accuse it and demand that it fight terrorism, and Israel can also tell the world that its occupation is not full.
In the past three years Israel has done much to harm all of the PA's bases of power. Little remains of it, and the zombie-like entity that continues to exist in Ramallah should now depart the world. This is not only an internal Palestinian matter: Israel, too, bears heavy responsibility, which it is trying to shake off. If the Palestinian cabinet ministers were to declare together that the game is over, that there is no longer a Palestinian Authority and no longer a Palestinian government, the entire weight of responsibility for the occupation would devolve on Israel.
4. For the pilots' information: Mohammed Tabazeh lost a son and a nephew in an IDF assassination operation in Gaza. Three of his sons were wounded, one is fighting for his life. Yet the air force reported there were no civilians near the targets' vehicle.
Gideon Levy
Haaretz, November 7, 2003
Here is what the precise hit of an Israeli Air Force missile, launched at a vehicle carrying Hamas operatives in Gaza on October 20, in a completely "targeted assassination," looks like: Young Mahmoud Tabazeh, just 14, lies on a bed in the intensive care department of Sheba Medical Center at Tel Hashomer, writhing in pain. Chills wrack his body; his legs - one shredded and the other broken - are bandaged; his whole body is bruised and pockmarked from the countless pieces of shrapnel that penetrated it. His complexion is pale and sallow, his head is shaven and scratched, blood drains from his abdomen into a bag. In a hoarse voice, he begs his father to do something to ease his pain. Mahmoud cries.
Two weeks after he was injured, the doctors say that his life is still in danger. The shrapnel struck his liver and apparently his pancreas, too, and the infection that spread in his body is life-threatening. A 14-year-old boy who went out to the street when he heard a loud explosion nearby, whose brother and cousin were killed, and three other brothers were wounded - but no one has told him all of this yet. For the information of the pilots who pressed the button that hurled missile after missile at the suspects' vehicle on the main road next to the Nuseirat refugee camp and later reported a direct hit.
For the information of the senior air force pilot who said the next day: "It's possible that some residents of nearby buildings were hit by shrapnel," that "this is a missile that's like a big hand grenade," but that the likelihood that many civilians were wounded was "extremely low." For the information of those responsible for disseminating the photos from the IDF drone that showed there were no civilians near the car at which two missiles were fired; and for the information of the senior IDF officials who claimed the next day that the Palestinians "fabricated" the large number of wounded in the operation.
For the information of all the above: Mohammed Tabazeh, who has worked in Israel for 30 years laying floors, had four of his nine children wounded in the operation, and is now sitting at the bedside of his son Mahmoud, who is fighting for his life, and can count 10 neighbors and relatives, including another son and a nephew, who were killed in the air force's perfectly successful and legal operation. Here are their names: Mohammed's son, Abdel Halim Tabazeh, 23, who was studying economics and statistics; his nephew, Ibrahim Tabazeh, 18, a 12th-grader who planned to study computers; Ahmed Halifi, 15; Ayoub al-Malak, 21, a third-year university student; Mohammed Hathat, 25, an engineer; Salah al-Din As'ad, 16, a high-school student; Atiya Mawnas, 20, a second-year university student; Mahdi Abu Jarbu'a, 19, a first-year student; Mohammed Barud, 12; and Dr. Zinadin Shahin, a married father of one. All of them, including the concerned doctor, ran frightened into the street when they heard the first missile strike the car, and a minute and a half later, the second missile struck, killing 10 and wounding dozens.
Tears well and threaten to overflow in the eyes of Mohammed Tabazeh, 49. Whenever he mentions his son Abdel Halim, who was killed, or his wounded son, Mahmoud, the tears start to flow. His face doesn't contort; it's not bitter weeping, just tears that silently trickle down his cheeks as he talks. He is a floorer who has worked in Israel for over three decades, even recently. His knees are scarred and tough, from all those years of kneeling on floor tiles.
Born in the Nuseirat refugee camp, his family came from the lost village of Hawama - between Ashdod and Ashkelon. His first job in Israel: cleaning Egged buses in Ramle, at age 14. His last job: laying the floor in a villa in Nir Zvi, about two months ago.
Between the bus and the villa, it seems he has tiled nearly half the country: "Four months ago, I put a special kind of stone tile around the shopping center in Givat Savyon. Go there and look. I did a job for an architect called Riskin, I'm sure you've heard of him. I tiled the houses of the richest people in Israel. Yakobi of the cleaning supplies business, Padani of Pinat Hayarkon. I tiled the Gordon pool 10 years ago. Zehava of Gali Shoes, whose husband was killed - I did her house. If I had her phone number, she'd come here right away. Where the Scud fell in Ramat Gan [during the Gulf War], I did six villas. I tiled all the houses there, in marble and stone. I put 10,000 meters of tile in Givat Shmuel. I did the Neta'im School 20 years ago. I did the ORT school in Ramat Gan and made it like new. I did villas in Ashdod."
From his work, he made close friendships that transcend checkpoints and national conflicts. The first visit to his wounded son, who was rushed to Sheba Hospital all alone in the middle of the night, came from Jewish friends from Givat Shmuel.
He says he has a hundred friends in Israel, and his fluent Hebrew proves it. He sits alone at the hospital and the trauma of the last days is apparent on his face. He worked in Israel his whole life in order to pay for an education for his nine children and for his brothers. He proudly enumerates their achievements: the brother who studied to be an X-ray technician at Sheba, the brother who is a registered nurse at Shifa Hospital in Gaza, the brother who is a physics teacher and close to getting his doctorate, and the sister who is an English teacher. And, of course, the children: the daughter who studied geography at the Islamic College, the dead son who studied economics and statistics, and the rest of the children, who are all diligent students. He can calculate the price of an hour of university study in dinars. There was a time when he earned a good living in Israel.
On Monday, October 20, everyone got up as usual in the morning and each member of the family went his own way. Mahmoud got up first. He is a ninth-grader at the UNRWA school in the camp, where the classes are held in two shifts. Mahmoud, who was in the first shift, got up at 6:30 in order to be in school by 7 A.M. Abdel Halim got up about an hour and a half later and left for the university. Due to the closure of the camp, their father stayed at home with his wife Rahab. The eldest son, Talal, who is unemployed, also stayed at home. The children came back for lunch, ate and then went out again.
An iron rule in the Tabazeh household: Everyone is at home by 10 P.M. Sometimes the father returns from work in Israel, even when he has a permit to stay over, just to make sure that everyone is home on time. He says he has always worried about his children, and tried to make sure that they weren't wandering about Gaza's dangerous streets.
That night, they were all back home in the two-story house by 8 P.M. At about 8:30, they heard a loud explosion that sounded like it came from the main road, about 30 meters away. Their house is in the first row of houses in Nuseirat, next to the road. What do you do when you hear an explosion? You go outside to see what happened. Within moments, everyone was outside. Mohammed says that he tried to keep his children from going out, but it all happened so fast, and who can control nine children, he moans.
Two minutes after the first missile struck, the second one landed - amid the crowd that had gathered on the spot. Tabazeh says that dozens of neighbors had gone outside, including Dr. Shahin, who ran over from his nearby clinic. It all happened very quickly and Tabazeh didn't see much. He heard shouting and saw a crowd of people and plumes of smoke. He did not see the burning car, or his wounded sons.
Only nine-year-old Mustafa stood by his side. A piece of shrapnel had hit him in the abdomen and he was bleeding. Someone picked him up and carried him to an ambulance. Then Tabazeh was told that his 18-year-old nephew Ibrahim had been wounded. He never got to see him. Ibrahim died three days later, at Shifa Hospital.
Tabazeh kept running back and forth, beside himself with worry and not knowing what had become of his children. There was chaos. He says that dozens of people were injured - 135 by the Palestinians' count. At the entrance to the clinic, he saw another nephew, Ala, 24, who was wounded in the ear and arm. Inside the clinic, he saw a seriously injured boy and then he was told that it was his son Mahmoud. "He was all covered in blood, I didn't recognize him." And in another room - another seriously injured person, whom he found out was his son, Abdel Halim.
His brother the nurse was trying to help Abdel but Tabazeh could see right away that it was hopeless. Abdel was vomiting blood. Mahmoud was taken to Shifa Hospital. Mohammed says that it looked as if his whole body had been shredded. "Say 1,000 pieces of shrapnel, 1,500 pieces - It's like taking rice and throwing it on him." But he couldn't get to him at Shifa - "How can you get there if there are 2,000 people trying to get in?" The final toll: five close family members hurt - a son and a nephew killed, and three sons - Mahmoud, Mustafa and Tariq, 20 - injured.
Mohammed and his wife returned to their home in a state of shock. They knew that two of their children were fighting for their lives and they couldn't be with them. At Shifa, Mahmoud underwent abdominal surgery and they also planned to amputate his leg. Nothing could be done for Abdel Halim. They buried him in the camp the next day. Then they transferred Mahmoud to Tel Hashomer. No one was permitted to accompany him.
The next day, Mohammed Tabazeh called Shifa and asked how his son was doing. At first he was told that there was no such child there. Gadi, Avi and Baruch, old friends from work, came to Tel Hashomer to look for their friend's son. Mohammed called Sima, a bookkeeper at the hospital whose home he had also worked on, and she eventually located the lost child; he was in critical condition in the pediatric intensive care unit. Mohammed called Sheba again, introduced himself as a worried neighbor and asked how the boy was doing. He was told that the boy's life was still in danger. Mohammed told Rahab that their son was okay.
Ibrahim Habib of Physicians for Human Rights - Israel tried to obtain an entry permit to Israel for the father. Avi, Gadi and Baruch called "every 15 minutes" to keep Mohammed updated. They have been going to the hospital every day since.
Mahmoud spent close to a week in the pediatric intensive care unit without his parents or any relatives allowed to stay with him. Security reasons. Last week, Mohammed was allowed to come to the hospital, and he hasn't budged from his son's bedside since then. He would like to be able to go home and let another family member come for a few days, but he's afraid that if he leaves Sheba, he won't be permitted to return. Mahmoud will probably spend many more weeks in the hospital. After Israel killed one of his sons and seriously wounded another, both of whom were wholly innocent bystanders, couldn't Mohammed expect just a bit of kindness? Such as an entry and exit permit that would enable him to be with his son, who is still in agonizing pain? Mohammed wants to thank the hospital staff for the kind treatment and care of his son.
Two of his neighbors who were injured in the same attack were also hospitalized at Tel Hashomer: Abd Tayam, a boy Mahmoud's age, who left here permanently paralyzed; and Husam Ta'ima, 19, who is in good condition. Every evening, when the Ramadan fast ends, a former Gazen who married a Jewish woman and lives in Israel comes to distribute food to the relatives of the injured so they can break their fast. An armed security guard arrives, summoned by hospital administrators to prevent us from photographing Mahmoud - despite his father's consent.
Prof. Zohar Barzilai, the director of the department, greets us and describes Mahmoud's condition as worrisome. "The boy is very sick. He has fractures and abdominal injuries that haven't healed yet. A break in the left thighbone, with burns and an open fracture. Since he was wounded, he has been ill for almost two weeks. The stomach continues to worry us. The functioning of the pancreas is affected. This is a serious injury that requires a long recovery. We are very worried about his leg. His head was also injured and he was on a respirator, but he got beyond that. He has made good progress, but he is still in great danger of a systemic failure that could happen at any moment."
Tabazeh listens silently. "It's always the little ones that go, on both sides. When there's a bombing for you, the little one is killed because he rides the bus and the big guy rides in a private car. And with us, this one's son and that one's son are abroad at our expense, and the little ones bear the brunt. Always the little ones." Again the tears flow from his eyes. Mahmoud lies in the next room, also crying; a nurse is changing the bandages on his mutilated leg. He's cold and the leg hurts.
What does he remember?
"A window in the house fell and I went outside to see what happened and then I saw my brother wounded," he whispers.
November 14, 2003
“It was like an earthquake.” That was how Fayez al-Banna of Block G in the refugee camp of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip described the arrival of Israeli tanks and bulldozers that came in October to destroy his four-story building, along with scores of other homes. At least 1250 Palestinians from Rafah camp were left homeless after the October invasions. On Sunday, November 9, MCC joined the Culture and Free Thought Association in distributing food packets and blankets to the families who had lost their homes. While grateful for the assistance, many recipients wanted to know why the world was more or less silent in the face of these house demolitions. Two days later, on November 11, the Israeli military destroyed 15 more homes in Rafah.
This past week has been an international week of action against the apartheid wall being built in the West Bank. MCC’s partner organization, the Palestinian Environmental NGO Network, has been a leader in providing high-quality resources and information about the wall. For stories, facts and figures, information sheets, articles, and powerpoint resources on the wall, go to http://www.stopthewall.org/.
Below you will find four pieces. The first, by Neve Gordon, professor of human rights at Ben Gurion University in the Negev, asks why the world is silent in the face of the apartheid reality being created by the construction of the fence/wall/barrier. The second and third pieces, by Danny Rubinstein and Gideon Levy respectively, look at how Israel is unilaterally realizing its old vision of establishing autonomous Palestinian rule in parts of the occupied territories even while maintaining military control over those territories; Gideon Levy voices a feeling that more and more Palestinians express, namely, that the ongoing existence of the Palestinian Authority allows Israel to have the occupation without assuming any of the responsibilities of an occupying power. In the fourth and final piece, Gideon Levy tells the story of a family from Gaza whose lives were shattered by the most recent “targeted killing” in the Gaza Strip; contrary to Israeli claims that the “targeted killing” did not exact a civilian toll, the reality is one of broken, grieving families.
--Alain Epp Weaver
1. Silence in the Face of Israeli Apatheid: Captives Behind Sharon's Wall
By NEVE GORDON
November 6, 2003
Jerusalem
As the government of the Jewish state forces the Palestinians in ghettos, history must be turning in its grave. Qalqiliya, a city of 45,000, has been surrounded by a concrete wall and only those who are granted permits by the Civil Administration can enter and exit the city's single gate.
Along the West Bank's north western border, an additional 12,000 people are now living in enclaves between the wall and the pre-1967 border. They too have become captives; yet the so-called security wall does not separate these Palestinian residents from Jewish Israelis, but rather from their brethren in the West Bank.
After placing them on small "islands," Israel is now "encouraging" them to leave their ancestral homes by undermining their infrastructure of existence. The goal, so it seems, is to annex the land uninhabited.
More recently, another 15-km of the wall were approved to be built in the midst of East Jerusalem. Ten minutes drive from my Jerusalem apartment, parts of this concrete wall wind between houses in the Abu Dis neighborhood. A new Berlin wall in the making, only this time in the holy city.
This wall will ultimately place approximately 35,000 Palestinians in a ghetto. Not only will they be isolated from their source of livelihood, but the sick will not be able to reach hospitals and the children will not be able to reach schools. Even the cemeteries will be out of bounds.
Think about it, once this Apartheid wall is completed, many Palestinian parents will be living on one side while their adult children will be living on the other. Families will be torn apart.
The wall dividing East Jerusalem clearly exposes Israel's lie, revealing that security is not the government's real objective. To put it simply, how will a wall that separates between Palestinian communities ensure the security of Jewish Israelis?
The facts on the ground lay bare that the Apartheid wall, which was ostensibly built to satisfy security needs, is in fact being used as an extremely efficient weapon of dispossession and abuse. Rhetoric aside, the Palestinians' land is being stolen, basic rights to freedom of movement and livelihood are systematically violated, and the rights to education, health and even burial are contravened. The instruments of violation are not only guns, tanks and airplanes, but Caterpillar bulldozers and Fiat tractors.
If the wall is completed, then 50 percent of the West Bank will be annexed to Israel, and there will be no possibility of creating a viable Palestinian state. Moreover, it will not solve Israel's security problems, but rather exacerbate them. By engendering extreme pressure on the Palestinian people, who are already living under dire circumstances, it fosters their sense that there are no prospects for the future, thus motivating people to join extremist groups like the Hamas and Islamic Jihad; indeed, the wall only increases the hatred towards the occupiers and promotes bloody attacks.
What baffles the Israeli peace camp is the international silence. A state among nations is placing thousands of people in ghettoes, forcing them to live in subhuman conditions, and not even a murmur of protest can be heard from the world leaders.
On November 9th, these international leaders have a unique opportunity to raise their voice against the Apartheid wall and 36 years of Israeli occupation. On this day, the world will be commemorating the 14th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall and the 65th anniversary of "Kristallnacht," the state orchestrated pogrom against Jews in Nazi Germany.
The international leaders should tell Prime Minister Sharon that at this historical moment he has an option between walls and ethnic cleansing, on the one hand, and open borders and freedom, on the other. They should also let him know, in unequivocal terms, that they will use all necessary means to ensure that Israel will choose the latter.
Neve Gordon teaches politics and human rights at Ben-Gurion University and can be reached at ngordon@bgumail.bgu.ac.il
2. Back to that old autonomy
Danny Rubinstein
Haaretz, November 10, 2003
Palestinian spokesmen are sneering at Israel's announcements that the IDF is easing restrictions in Gaza and the territories. One need only look to the PA's news sheet, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, from last Friday, where the lead headline on the story about what happened in Gaza and the West Bank a day earlier was, "The easing fraud."
The story read, "A woman who was shot by occupation soldiers bled to death in her home in Nablus, and an engineer was murdered when he drove by the Tul Karm checkpoint, while four people were injured by the bombing of Khan Yunis and 20 others were arrested in the West Bank." The reports have been accompanied daily by pictures of demolished homes, uprooted and burned olive trees, barbed-wire fences and women and children clearly exposed to rifles.
Last weekend, 12 Palestinians were killed, among them activists from Hamas and Islamic Jihad, but also a child from the Balata refugee camp and another from Gaza.
In Ramallah, they warmly welcomed the removal of the Ein Arik checkpoint, which had closed the western exit from the city. This is a significant easing for the city's residents, who are also waiting for the Sorda checkpoint, which is blocking movement north from Ramallah, to fall. But Arafat Khalef, the mayor of Bitoonyah, where the Ein Arik checkpoint is located, said he has experience with these checkpoints. Some months ago, he said, there was talk of easing the closure, and Israeli tractors tore down the checkpoint, but the easing lasted only three or four days.
The Ein Arik checkpoint is one of 163 in the West Bank (according to a Palestinian count), and Palestinian reports on its removal were alongside dozens of reports on how tight the closure is, the curfew, and other restrictions on movement that were imposed once construction of the separation fence started. In other words, not only has it not been made easier for Palestinians to move in the West Bank, but the opposite is actually true - it is harder and harder to go from place to place.
It is actually doubtful if there were ever harsher restrictions on traveling to the Al-Aqsa mosque on Fridays during the month of Ramadan.
Every road into East Jerusalem last Friday was blocked with checkpoints and hundreds of police officers and soldiers, if not more. In effect, it made it impossible for anyone from the territories to get to the mosque, even if they had the necessary permits. A Jerusalem police spokesman said some 180,000 people reached the mosque, though Waqf management said the number was much lower and most were Israelis.
The Palestinians are also deriding the number of permits granted to enter Israel to work. According to the Palestinian Labor Ministry, this is misleading, because the figures are still trifling compared to the numbers permitted before the intifada. What really stood out last Saturday was a report that 50-year-old Ibrahim Darduna from Gaza had died in Tel Hashomer hospital after being beaten to death by unknown assailants in his place of work in Petah Tikva.
So where is all this leading? Many years ago, Israeli plans for granting Palestinians autonomy were circulating. The best known of these plans was drafted in 1977 by Menachem Begin after he was elected prime minister. The autonomy plan (for residents, not the territories) led the Israeli government and the military rule in the territories to set up settlements, capturing land and spreading the IDF around. The Palestinians rejected the plans, and every Palestinian mayor resigned in 1981, saying they didn't want to serve as tools of the Israeli occupation.
What is happening now in the territories is more or less the Israeli imposition of such a plan of autonomy. And there is no chance it will last.
3. Time to do away with the PA
Gideon Levy
Haaretz, November 9, 2003
This farce should have been ended long ago. If the leaders of the Palestinian Authority had been blessed with a greater measure of self-respect, readiness for personal sacrifice and political audacity, they would have long since declared the PA liquidated and left all the responsibility solely in Israel's hands.
If they were more concerned about the subjects they are supposed to be in charge of - the well-being of their nation - they would have resigned and thereby torn the mask from the false impression of the supposed government and the "state in the making." They would have ceased to be the fig leaf that serves and perpetuates the Israeli occupation. Instead, they cling to the few honors and benefits that Israel continues to confer on a few of them, and they go on lending a hand to the great deception that a sovereign Palestinian Authority and a government with powers exist.
Under a cover of empty titles, they continue to take part in the fraud while many in Israel and elsewhere find it convenient to go on believing that the Israeli occupation of the territories has not reverted to being total, and that there is a Palestinian government. "Ministers," "director-generals," "deputy ministers" and "governors," whose titles are empty and lack any authority, and who cannot rule or make decisions about anything except for the official cars and the VIP cards that enable them to go through checkpoints, continue to make a mockery of their nation and the international community.
Is the Palestinian minister of internal security capable of seeing to the security of even one Palestinian in the face of the assassinations, the helicopters, the soldiers and the troops who burst into homes in the middle of the night? Is the health minister capable of seeing to the health of his nationals, when every soldier at every checkpoint can delay ambulances and patients and when the cities and villages are under lengthy curfew? And what can the agriculture minister do when settlers cut down and uproot hundreds of olive trees without interference or prevent the harvesting of the olives, and when the Israeli army defoliates thousands of dunams of fields and vineyards? And how will the minister of labor ensure jobs for the people, when they cannot even leave their places of residence? What can the transportation minister do when his country is strewn with checkpoints and the Israel Defense Forces is the exclusive sovereign that decides which roads are for Jews only and which Palestinian bus lines will be allowed to operate? The list goes on and on.
On the streets of Ramallah, a passerby joked this weekend: "While the Palestinians were arguing over whether Nasser Yusuf would be appointed interior minister or not, the Israelis finished building the separation fence." The majority of Palestinians have no idea who their cabinet ministers are, and for good reason: most of the small amount of aid they receive comes from organizations such as UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency) and from the local governments, not from the imaginary government.
The most wretched situations of all are the meetings of Palestinian ministers with Israeli ministers. A case in point was the meeting between the finance minister, Salam Fayad (who suspended himself last Thursday), the favorite of the United States and Israel, and Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz, which was intended solely to smooth Mofaz's visit to Washington. It's hard to understand why the Palestinian official agreed to meet with Mofaz - who more than any other Israeli is responsible for the cruel policy toward his nation - only to serve the political needs of the Israeli minister. Why is Israel allowed to boycott Palestinian leaders, above all Yasser Arafat, whereas Palestinian ministers have no similar red lines? While European and American officials decline to visit the office of the Israeli justice minister, which is located in East Jerusalem, the outgoing Palestinian justice minister, Abd al-Karim Abu Salah, together with the minister responsible for prisoners, Hisham Abd al-Razak, met with Justice Minister Yosef Lapid in his office. The Palestinian public has only contempt for such cabinet ministers.
This deception in the form of a supposedly autonomous government and Authority serves the Israeli government above all. The Palestinian
Authority's existence allows Israel to accuse it and demand that it fight terrorism, and Israel can also tell the world that its occupation is not full.
In the past three years Israel has done much to harm all of the PA's bases of power. Little remains of it, and the zombie-like entity that continues to exist in Ramallah should now depart the world. This is not only an internal Palestinian matter: Israel, too, bears heavy responsibility, which it is trying to shake off. If the Palestinian cabinet ministers were to declare together that the game is over, that there is no longer a Palestinian Authority and no longer a Palestinian government, the entire weight of responsibility for the occupation would devolve on Israel.
4. For the pilots' information: Mohammed Tabazeh lost a son and a nephew in an IDF assassination operation in Gaza. Three of his sons were wounded, one is fighting for his life. Yet the air force reported there were no civilians near the targets' vehicle.
Gideon Levy
Haaretz, November 7, 2003
Here is what the precise hit of an Israeli Air Force missile, launched at a vehicle carrying Hamas operatives in Gaza on October 20, in a completely "targeted assassination," looks like: Young Mahmoud Tabazeh, just 14, lies on a bed in the intensive care department of Sheba Medical Center at Tel Hashomer, writhing in pain. Chills wrack his body; his legs - one shredded and the other broken - are bandaged; his whole body is bruised and pockmarked from the countless pieces of shrapnel that penetrated it. His complexion is pale and sallow, his head is shaven and scratched, blood drains from his abdomen into a bag. In a hoarse voice, he begs his father to do something to ease his pain. Mahmoud cries.
Two weeks after he was injured, the doctors say that his life is still in danger. The shrapnel struck his liver and apparently his pancreas, too, and the infection that spread in his body is life-threatening. A 14-year-old boy who went out to the street when he heard a loud explosion nearby, whose brother and cousin were killed, and three other brothers were wounded - but no one has told him all of this yet. For the information of the pilots who pressed the button that hurled missile after missile at the suspects' vehicle on the main road next to the Nuseirat refugee camp and later reported a direct hit.
For the information of the senior air force pilot who said the next day: "It's possible that some residents of nearby buildings were hit by shrapnel," that "this is a missile that's like a big hand grenade," but that the likelihood that many civilians were wounded was "extremely low." For the information of those responsible for disseminating the photos from the IDF drone that showed there were no civilians near the car at which two missiles were fired; and for the information of the senior IDF officials who claimed the next day that the Palestinians "fabricated" the large number of wounded in the operation.
For the information of all the above: Mohammed Tabazeh, who has worked in Israel for 30 years laying floors, had four of his nine children wounded in the operation, and is now sitting at the bedside of his son Mahmoud, who is fighting for his life, and can count 10 neighbors and relatives, including another son and a nephew, who were killed in the air force's perfectly successful and legal operation. Here are their names: Mohammed's son, Abdel Halim Tabazeh, 23, who was studying economics and statistics; his nephew, Ibrahim Tabazeh, 18, a 12th-grader who planned to study computers; Ahmed Halifi, 15; Ayoub al-Malak, 21, a third-year university student; Mohammed Hathat, 25, an engineer; Salah al-Din As'ad, 16, a high-school student; Atiya Mawnas, 20, a second-year university student; Mahdi Abu Jarbu'a, 19, a first-year student; Mohammed Barud, 12; and Dr. Zinadin Shahin, a married father of one. All of them, including the concerned doctor, ran frightened into the street when they heard the first missile strike the car, and a minute and a half later, the second missile struck, killing 10 and wounding dozens.
Tears well and threaten to overflow in the eyes of Mohammed Tabazeh, 49. Whenever he mentions his son Abdel Halim, who was killed, or his wounded son, Mahmoud, the tears start to flow. His face doesn't contort; it's not bitter weeping, just tears that silently trickle down his cheeks as he talks. He is a floorer who has worked in Israel for over three decades, even recently. His knees are scarred and tough, from all those years of kneeling on floor tiles.
Born in the Nuseirat refugee camp, his family came from the lost village of Hawama - between Ashdod and Ashkelon. His first job in Israel: cleaning Egged buses in Ramle, at age 14. His last job: laying the floor in a villa in Nir Zvi, about two months ago.
Between the bus and the villa, it seems he has tiled nearly half the country: "Four months ago, I put a special kind of stone tile around the shopping center in Givat Savyon. Go there and look. I did a job for an architect called Riskin, I'm sure you've heard of him. I tiled the houses of the richest people in Israel. Yakobi of the cleaning supplies business, Padani of Pinat Hayarkon. I tiled the Gordon pool 10 years ago. Zehava of Gali Shoes, whose husband was killed - I did her house. If I had her phone number, she'd come here right away. Where the Scud fell in Ramat Gan [during the Gulf War], I did six villas. I tiled all the houses there, in marble and stone. I put 10,000 meters of tile in Givat Shmuel. I did the Neta'im School 20 years ago. I did the ORT school in Ramat Gan and made it like new. I did villas in Ashdod."
From his work, he made close friendships that transcend checkpoints and national conflicts. The first visit to his wounded son, who was rushed to Sheba Hospital all alone in the middle of the night, came from Jewish friends from Givat Shmuel.
He says he has a hundred friends in Israel, and his fluent Hebrew proves it. He sits alone at the hospital and the trauma of the last days is apparent on his face. He worked in Israel his whole life in order to pay for an education for his nine children and for his brothers. He proudly enumerates their achievements: the brother who studied to be an X-ray technician at Sheba, the brother who is a registered nurse at Shifa Hospital in Gaza, the brother who is a physics teacher and close to getting his doctorate, and the sister who is an English teacher. And, of course, the children: the daughter who studied geography at the Islamic College, the dead son who studied economics and statistics, and the rest of the children, who are all diligent students. He can calculate the price of an hour of university study in dinars. There was a time when he earned a good living in Israel.
On Monday, October 20, everyone got up as usual in the morning and each member of the family went his own way. Mahmoud got up first. He is a ninth-grader at the UNRWA school in the camp, where the classes are held in two shifts. Mahmoud, who was in the first shift, got up at 6:30 in order to be in school by 7 A.M. Abdel Halim got up about an hour and a half later and left for the university. Due to the closure of the camp, their father stayed at home with his wife Rahab. The eldest son, Talal, who is unemployed, also stayed at home. The children came back for lunch, ate and then went out again.
An iron rule in the Tabazeh household: Everyone is at home by 10 P.M. Sometimes the father returns from work in Israel, even when he has a permit to stay over, just to make sure that everyone is home on time. He says he has always worried about his children, and tried to make sure that they weren't wandering about Gaza's dangerous streets.
That night, they were all back home in the two-story house by 8 P.M. At about 8:30, they heard a loud explosion that sounded like it came from the main road, about 30 meters away. Their house is in the first row of houses in Nuseirat, next to the road. What do you do when you hear an explosion? You go outside to see what happened. Within moments, everyone was outside. Mohammed says that he tried to keep his children from going out, but it all happened so fast, and who can control nine children, he moans.
Two minutes after the first missile struck, the second one landed - amid the crowd that had gathered on the spot. Tabazeh says that dozens of neighbors had gone outside, including Dr. Shahin, who ran over from his nearby clinic. It all happened very quickly and Tabazeh didn't see much. He heard shouting and saw a crowd of people and plumes of smoke. He did not see the burning car, or his wounded sons.
Only nine-year-old Mustafa stood by his side. A piece of shrapnel had hit him in the abdomen and he was bleeding. Someone picked him up and carried him to an ambulance. Then Tabazeh was told that his 18-year-old nephew Ibrahim had been wounded. He never got to see him. Ibrahim died three days later, at Shifa Hospital.
Tabazeh kept running back and forth, beside himself with worry and not knowing what had become of his children. There was chaos. He says that dozens of people were injured - 135 by the Palestinians' count. At the entrance to the clinic, he saw another nephew, Ala, 24, who was wounded in the ear and arm. Inside the clinic, he saw a seriously injured boy and then he was told that it was his son Mahmoud. "He was all covered in blood, I didn't recognize him." And in another room - another seriously injured person, whom he found out was his son, Abdel Halim.
His brother the nurse was trying to help Abdel but Tabazeh could see right away that it was hopeless. Abdel was vomiting blood. Mahmoud was taken to Shifa Hospital. Mohammed says that it looked as if his whole body had been shredded. "Say 1,000 pieces of shrapnel, 1,500 pieces - It's like taking rice and throwing it on him." But he couldn't get to him at Shifa - "How can you get there if there are 2,000 people trying to get in?" The final toll: five close family members hurt - a son and a nephew killed, and three sons - Mahmoud, Mustafa and Tariq, 20 - injured.
Mohammed and his wife returned to their home in a state of shock. They knew that two of their children were fighting for their lives and they couldn't be with them. At Shifa, Mahmoud underwent abdominal surgery and they also planned to amputate his leg. Nothing could be done for Abdel Halim. They buried him in the camp the next day. Then they transferred Mahmoud to Tel Hashomer. No one was permitted to accompany him.
The next day, Mohammed Tabazeh called Shifa and asked how his son was doing. At first he was told that there was no such child there. Gadi, Avi and Baruch, old friends from work, came to Tel Hashomer to look for their friend's son. Mohammed called Sima, a bookkeeper at the hospital whose home he had also worked on, and she eventually located the lost child; he was in critical condition in the pediatric intensive care unit. Mohammed called Sheba again, introduced himself as a worried neighbor and asked how the boy was doing. He was told that the boy's life was still in danger. Mohammed told Rahab that their son was okay.
Ibrahim Habib of Physicians for Human Rights - Israel tried to obtain an entry permit to Israel for the father. Avi, Gadi and Baruch called "every 15 minutes" to keep Mohammed updated. They have been going to the hospital every day since.
Mahmoud spent close to a week in the pediatric intensive care unit without his parents or any relatives allowed to stay with him. Security reasons. Last week, Mohammed was allowed to come to the hospital, and he hasn't budged from his son's bedside since then. He would like to be able to go home and let another family member come for a few days, but he's afraid that if he leaves Sheba, he won't be permitted to return. Mahmoud will probably spend many more weeks in the hospital. After Israel killed one of his sons and seriously wounded another, both of whom were wholly innocent bystanders, couldn't Mohammed expect just a bit of kindness? Such as an entry and exit permit that would enable him to be with his son, who is still in agonizing pain? Mohammed wants to thank the hospital staff for the kind treatment and care of his son.
Two of his neighbors who were injured in the same attack were also hospitalized at Tel Hashomer: Abd Tayam, a boy Mahmoud's age, who left here permanently paralyzed; and Husam Ta'ima, 19, who is in good condition. Every evening, when the Ramadan fast ends, a former Gazen who married a Jewish woman and lives in Israel comes to distribute food to the relatives of the injured so they can break their fast. An armed security guard arrives, summoned by hospital administrators to prevent us from photographing Mahmoud - despite his father's consent.
Prof. Zohar Barzilai, the director of the department, greets us and describes Mahmoud's condition as worrisome. "The boy is very sick. He has fractures and abdominal injuries that haven't healed yet. A break in the left thighbone, with burns and an open fracture. Since he was wounded, he has been ill for almost two weeks. The stomach continues to worry us. The functioning of the pancreas is affected. This is a serious injury that requires a long recovery. We are very worried about his leg. His head was also injured and he was on a respirator, but he got beyond that. He has made good progress, but he is still in great danger of a systemic failure that could happen at any moment."
Tabazeh listens silently. "It's always the little ones that go, on both sides. When there's a bombing for you, the little one is killed because he rides the bus and the big guy rides in a private car. And with us, this one's son and that one's son are abroad at our expense, and the little ones bear the brunt. Always the little ones." Again the tears flow from his eyes. Mahmoud lies in the next room, also crying; a nurse is changing the bandages on his mutilated leg. He's cold and the leg hurts.
What does he remember?
"A window in the house fell and I went outside to see what happened and then I saw my brother wounded," he whispers.
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